"Oh, I said so, didn't I? Your captain and his party are safe in Mr.

Vandersee's hands if they have done no wrong."

"Safe in Vandersee's hands," repeated Jerry slowly, as if groping for inspiration. "In--Vandersee's--hands! Pi'zen my soul, but that's what I've believed all along! Come on--March!" he gritted, and plunged ahead.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The trail became more open shortly, and progress was swift. Natalie kept her place with increasing difficulty, but never a murmur escaped her.

Her shoes had long since become shapeless envelopes of soggy leather; her skirt was tattered like a Foreign Legion battle flag. Her hands and face were scratched and swollen with insect bites, but her eyes were dry and her lips firm, for some inward voice told her that she was about to learn some part of the truth that had been hidden from her. For all her earlier a.s.sertion that Vandersee was Barry's friend and a man to be trusted, a stubborn question had taken root in her breast since that message was delivered. If Vandersee was the man who had taken Barry's party, what became of all the previous suppositions and arguments regarding their relative relations with Leyden?

If the question were not to be answered quickly, at least it was to be forced aside by more vital affairs; all doubts were to be settled by one swift decision. The guides suddenly ran back, chattered volubly and murmuringly together, then stepped aside, waved Rolfe forward with a warning of caution, and joined their fellows who had been carrying their guns for them.

Rolfe parted the thicket, peered through, swore fiercely under his breath and didn't apologize for it. He beckoned Blunt, and that dour old salt squinted at the sight that had staggered the mate. Natalie stepped softly beside them and gazed over their stooping backs, to swiftly step back with a choking sob of horror.

"Navy party all right!" gritted Rolfe, squirming in every inch of his skin with the tremendous responsibility confronting him. None knew better than he what the consequences must be of attacking a party of Government sailors. But the sight he saw--the sounds he heard!

He looked out across a wide circle of sward, dotted with hummocks of brown earth. The trees surrounding it held fruit of Nero's kind. To each trunk a writhing, moaning _Barang_ seaman was lashed, his face and body smeared with sticky stuff that was alive with crawling ants. A man squirmed and whimpered within five feet of Jerry Rolfe's eyes; the havoc of those busy insects was only too horribly apparent.

And on two of the brown hummocks, spread-eagled with vine ropes that cut deep into wrists and ankles, lay Barry and Little, grimly silent as to complaint, but with the haze of gnawing terror in their eyes. Their bodies swarmed with scurrying life; the heat had melted the native sugar on their naked skin until it had run in sticky rivulets to every part of their tortured bodies. Under the heaving mult.i.tude at Barry's throat, blood was trickling; an awful hint of a frightful end not far away.

Lounging at their ease, smoking or eating, lay a party of men in naval uniforms, three of them white men, the rest native Celebes. They chatted and laughed together with callous indifference for their captives'

agonies; and at these white men--officers, by their dress--Rolfe found Bill Blunt glaring with eyes that were puzzled at first, then blazing with fury.

"Mr. Rolfe, pile into 'em!" the old salt growled hoa.r.s.ely. "Give 'em h.e.l.l an' blazes. Them ain't no more Dutch Navy men than you be! Gawd!

Ain't I manned gangway fer th' Hollanders offen enough to know 'em? Them swine is fakers!"

Old Bill moistened his palm again, charged his rifle under his coat, and got on his toes waiting for the mate's word. Rolfe needed no other excuse to attack. Even though Blunt's announcement proved simply a ruse to force his hand, he cared nothing now. He led Miss Sheldon back to a clump of great trees, put a native by her, and handed her his own pistol.

"Stay here, Miss," he commanded sharply. "I'll come for you when it's safe. Don't move!"

Natalie took to her hiding place trembling, but not with fear. She had seen and heard that which chilled her blood and filled her head with redoubled doubts. But she had no time for considering those doubts; Rolfe darted back to his men, divided them into two parties, and, carefully a.s.suring himself that the entire band of captors lay before him, he sent Blunt around to an opposite point on the glade and awaited the prearranged whistle.

Soon it came--a cleverly imitated boatswain's pipe for All Hands!--and suddenly the moaning ceased, the guards sat up in swift alarm.

"Give 'em h.e.l.l, bullies!" roared Rolfe, and in a flash the glade crashed to the discharge of a dozen rifles. The first shots went astray, because the boatswain's pipe brought the captors to their feet after the first surprise; but a second discharge took heavy toll, and the three white officers rallied back to back, shouting frenziedly to their men to stand.

"Ay, they'll stand--stiff!" growled Bill Blunt, swinging his rifle end-for-end and jamming the b.u.t.t into the face of a panic-stricken native seaman. A bullet from Rolfe pa.s.sed through the head of the leader, and out of a whizzing shower of lead from the _Barang's_ men another white went down. Then the native guards broke and ran, flinging guns away in their panic. The remaining officer, glaring around with savage hate in his eyes, turned to run too, but before leaving the spot he sprang over to Barry and placed his pistol to the prostrate skipper's head.

Then from the forest rang another shot, echoed by a sobbing cry, and the fellow pitched headlong across Barry, dead, his pistol exploding harmlessly, his throat pouring out his life. And Bill Blunt, following up that shot, came upon Natalie Sheldon, fainting on the edge of the glade, a warm pistol gripped tightly in her rigid hand.

Rolfe and his men had gone immediately to the aid of the tortured captives, and the two guides were despatched hotfoot after water. Then, with willing hands busily washing pained bodies free from sticky sugar and fiercely fighting ants, some distance removed from the spot where other hands were setting fire to the gra.s.s to beat back the scurrying hordes, Jack Barry and Little began to draw breath free from pangs and scrutinized each other in silent appraisal of damages. Neither had given sign of the agony sustained, save an occasional inevitable moan; yet neither had escaped without grievous injury that was painful if not more serious. But Little's bubbling spirits had not been utterly quenched, only damped; and now he grinned at the skipper with a brave effort at humor.

"Ain't very big, but ain't their darned feet hot!" he said, shrugging his shoulders suggestively.

"Huh!" grunted Barry, swabbing away at his throat, which still bled.

"Only thing that bothers me is that a white man can't very well reciprocate the same way. I'd lose an eye to change dispositions with Leyden for just one hour and have him in my hands!"

"Cheer up, old hoss," grinned Little. "Go to it, if the chance turns up, and maybe the missionaries will convert you back to whitemanship again."

Their thoughts were turned into a pleasanter channel by the arrival of Miss Sheldon, recovered from her faintness and eager to be of service to them. She knelt between them, Rolfe's medicine kit in her hands, and began to cleanse and bandage their more painful hurts. The seamen, cut down from their trees, were in the hands of their shipmates.

"This is horrible, Captain Barry," murmured Natalie, avoiding his eyes.

A flush overspread her fair face as she strove to utter the thoughts nearest her heart. "I am terribly upset about this," she said. "It seems impossible that sailors of any civilized government could do things like this."

"They don't, Miss," returned Barry grimly. He sought her eyes, and her gaze met his for an instant, to be immediately lowered. "These fellows were no more sailors than you are. Perhaps you will be disagreeably surprised to hear that your friend Mr. Leyden looked in on us while the ants were feeding."

"Mr. Leyden? Impossible!" cried the girl, drawing back and regarding Barry with horror. "Surely you are mistaken."

"I thought you wouldn't believe it," rejoined Little, with a wry smile.

"True, though, Miss, and he said he'd look in on us again before the ants took their dessert."

"What about Vandersee, Cap'n Barry?" blurted out Rolfe, coming up and breaking in on the talk without ceremony.

"Vandersee?" queried the skipper. "What of him, Rolfe? I'd have given a lot to have him around when this happened. I'll bet we never would have got into this mess."

"But didn't he get you?" Jerry Rolfe's voice went to a squeak with astonishment.

"Get us? What's biting you, man?"

Rolfe showed the skipper the message he had received from the big Hollander, and Barry scanned it narrowly, then pa.s.sed it on to Little.

"I don't quite understand this," replied Barry, puzzled. "Perhaps he meant real navy men. These were fakes, as you have found out by now."

"Sure, but I'd have been leary about firing on 'em at that if Blunt hadn't spotted their imitation uniforms first, sir."

"Well, Vandersee had nothing to do with this, Rolfe. As I have told Miss Sheldon, it was Leyden who looked in on us; and it was Leyden's men who got us, fooling me with their official att.i.tude."

"Oh, what does it all mean?" cried Natalie, gazing from face to face in perplexity. "Are you sure that Mr. Leyden has done this thing? He told me you were opium smugglers, Captain Barry, and I believed that he was aiding the Government to stamp out the traffic."

"Opium!" gasped the skipper furiously. "That's what the fake navy officer pulled on us up the river. He contrived to find a can or two in the shacks, too."

"And is it untrue?" The girl's low tone held a tremor of hope.

"Untrue! Good G.o.d, Miss Sheldon, what do you take us for?"

The girl was silent. She lowered her face and went on with her work of alleviating pain, and all talk ceased. Every man there realized that somewhere behind the outward show of chance hostility lay a deeper, more sinister problem yet to be solved. Barry found himself peering up at the girl, wondering if after all she was out of his reach. Her touch thrilled him, and when her eyes met his in fleeting glance they glowed warm and moist, her lips trembled as if she were fighting to restrain tears. And for what? Barry hoped, then feared. Only a sight of Little's quizzical grin fastened upon him prevented him uttering a speech that must have embarra.s.sed the girl.

The silent stress was relieved by the gruff, deep-sea voice of Bill Blunt, leading somebody into the little jungle covert where the injured men lay.

"I tell ye we didn't pitch into no navy party, Mister," the old fellow growled. "All as we done wuz to knock seven bells outa a mob o' dirty murderers. Come on an' see th' skipper hisself. He kin tell ye."

Vandersee emerged from the bush, strode across to Barry, and knelt beside him. His face was dark with irritation.

"I am sorry to see this, Captain," he said softly, and his usual smile swept across his face, to leave it dark again. "I particularly wished to avoid this attack, though. It's very unfortunate."