CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

PETER PEGG SAYS "YUSS."

"Yuss," said Peter Pegg, as he sat in the profound darkness, for it was some hours before the moon would rise, and he was solacing himself with a piece of the bread-crust, which was terribly dry and exceedingly hard--"yuss, this is precious nice tackle for a fellow's teeth. Wants nibbling like a rat. Yuss, what I have telled the young governor sounds 'most as easy as cutting b.u.t.ter, only not quite. I can get the helephant up to the door here, and I don't see much hardship in mounting him and riding off; only how am I to manage to get him here at the right time? Ah, well, I'm getting on. The governor's better, and I have got a spear, and, so to speak, I have got a helephant, and a fine one, too.

So I am not going to give up because some of the job is hard. This 'ere bit of bread is as hard as wood, but I am getting through with it, and that's what I mean to do about our escape. Where you can't take a fair bite at anything, why, you must nibble; and I must go on nibbling now to find some way of getting out of this here ramshackle place. If I can just contrive a hole so that I can climb on the roof whenever I like, and be able to cover it up again so that these beauties don't know, I don't feel a bit doubtful of being able to slide down to the eaves, and then hold tight and get my toes in here and my toes in there, and climbing back'ard till one gets to the ground. As to getting back again--oh, any one could do that. He will do it as well as I can as soon as he is better. Now then, ready? Yuss. Then here's to begin."

He rose softly, stepped quietly over the leaves, and deftly climbed up the door again, where he applied his eye to the ragged lookout.

"My, it is dark!" he said to himself. "There must be a regular river fog floating over the place. I can't see a star."

He stopped peering out and listening, but everything was so black that he could not even distinguish the tree opposite to him beneath which the sentry had taken his post.

"So still," muttered the lad, "that I don't believe he can be there. If he was, everything is so quiet that--Whoo--hoop! What's that? Like somebody learning to play the key bugle without any wind. Here, I know: it's one of them long-legged, long-necked birds with a big beak, that stands a little way out in the river and picks up the frogs. Yes, that's it. Now it's all right, so here goes."

He crossed to the other side of the building so as to be farthest from the tree where he had last seen the sentry, and, as quietly as he could, he began to climb the back wall of the great stable; and, as he had antic.i.p.ated, this did not prove difficult, the crossbars and uprights, interlaced with cane and palm-strip, furnishing plenty of foot and hand hold, so that, without making much rustling, he drew himself up and up till his head came in contact with one of the sloping bamboo rafters, to which battens of the same cane were lashed with thin rotan; and, as he expected, upon these battens lay a dense thatch of so-called attap--that is to say, large mats of palm-leaves were laid one over the other till a thick cover, which would throw off the most intense of the tropic rains, roofed the building in.

Standing with his toes well wedged into the side, the would-be fugitive raised one arm and began feeling about in the mats above him, and chuckled.

"Why, it's just nonsense," he said. "Talk about escaping. Why, one has got nothing to do but shove these up a little way and creep through.

Then the attap will all fall back again, and no one will see as the place has been disturbed. Then there is the getting down again. Well, that's just as easy as it is to get up. Oh, don't I wish Mister Archie was all right! These 'ere Malays must be fools to think of shutting up a couple of English young fellows in a place like this. Well, it's awful hot here. The mats are quite warm still with the sunshine. I will just let in some air."

He began thrusting the attap thatch a little upward, and there was a loud scuffling and beating of wings.

"Birds," he muttered; "and a good roost, too. Wonder what they are."

Then there was a puff of cool, moist, night air seeming to be sucked into the building as he made an opening.

"Ah, that's just prime," he sighed; and he raised himself a little more, and then, as he thrust out one hand to get a fresh hold of the bamboo batten, he stopped short, silent and motionless, and with cold perspiration breaking out all over his face, for his hand had closed upon one of the battens, which felt cold and scaly; and but for the fact that his left arm was hooked over one of the sloping supports of the ridge-pole, he would have dropped heavily back on to the floor of the elephant-stable.

As it was, his legs felt as if they were hanging paralysed downward, and he was conscious of the fact that the batten that he had last grasped was slowly gliding through his right hand and getting thinner and thinner, till it pa.s.sed rustling away right in amongst the palm-leaf thatching.

"Oh dear!" sighed Peter Pegg, "could that have been fancy? It felt just like a big snake. Phew! How hot it is! And yet I feel quite cold. Is it fancy? I know snakes do climb trees, but what could a snake be doing up here in the thatch? Oh, murder! It's all right enough. I know!

Didn't the Doctor tell Mister Archie that they crawled up the walls and had their regular runs so that they could catch the rats and birds?"

He made a movement, as he began to master the strange feeling of dread, to replace his feet in the rough trellis into which his toes had been thrust, and then woke to the fact that his legs were not swinging downwards, for the half-paralysing sensation had been caused by sheer dread.

"Think of that, now!" he said. "I thought they would give way. Here, let's get down out of this. Shouldn't be at all surprised if there's snakes swarming all over the place. That one didn't bite me, did it?

Don't know that I should mind a honest bite, but some of these things are poison. Here, I have had enough of this;" and he felt about with a strange feeling of creepiness for the batten that he had not touched.

This he grasped shrinkingly.

"Oh, this ain't a snake," he said. "Bamboo; and a thick 'un, too, for here's a knot. Here, don't be such a coward, Peter. Go on, comrade.

That there snake's gone, and it was more afraid of you than you were of it."

Gaining fresh courage, he had very little difficulty in creeping out from beneath the great mat and drawing himself upwards till he lay out in the darkness upon the roof, panting heavily as he breathed in the soft, cool, night air.

"Now, can I find this hole again?" he said to himself. "Oh yes, all right. And what's this?" For his hand encountered a good-sized stone secured in its place by a thin rotan bound over it, and pa.s.sed through the thatch and under one of the battens. "That's all right," he said to himself, as he began to crawl up the slope towards the ridge; and in doing so he found that flat, rough, slaty pieces of stone followed at intervals to weight the roof, and formed supports for his feet, so that he was able to creep with the greatest ease right up to the ridge.

"Be quite jolly," he said, "if it wasn't for the feeling that I may be crawling over millions of snakes. However, I am in for it now, and I must chance it. Now about getting down."

He lay upon the back slope of the building, resting with one arm over the ridge, listening intently, knowing that he must be gazing in the direction of the sentry; but the silence was as intense as the darkness, and he still hesitated as to whether he should lower himself down again in the direction from which he had come.

Feeling, however, that if he descended from there it would be into the jungle, which he knew from experience was one tangled and matted ma.s.s, impervious to human beings, he decided to go on, and proceeding very cautiously, he began to lower himself down towards the eaves by the help of the many stones which offered support to hand or foot.

"Why, it's just like going downstairs," thought the lad; and then, as if to prove it was not so easy, one of the stones, upon which he was bearing with his foot, slipped from its rotan tie and began to rustle loudly down before him.

Then there was a sharp hiss, which made the lad cling tightly and begin to feel a return of the paralysing shudder which had unnerved him a few minutes before. The hiss was repeated, and followed by a sound like a quick reiteration of the word _Yah_; and then Peter Pegg's heart began to palpitate heavily as he realised that it was a human utterance coming from the direction of the sentry's tree, and followed by a quick movement as of some one advancing towards the stable door.

"You brute! How you frightened me!" said the lad to himself, as, obeying his next impulse, he tore a stone that was held in its place by the thin cane, raised it above his head, and hurled it with all his might in the direction of the sentry.

"There's a fool!" he muttered to himself as he lay full length, listening to a gabbling, threatening utterance from below, which was slurred with hisses and dotted with angry e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns. "He's a-swearing at me in his ugly lingo," thought Peter. "Can't see him, so he can't see me, and of course he can't tell who it is up here. Here, I know," he continued, as there was a series of hisses such as would be uttered by one who was trying to drive some obnoxious creature away.

"Hississh!" cried the sentry again.

"Blest if he don't think I'm a big monkey up here," thought Peter.

"Monkeys throw sticks and stones. What a lark! Wish Mister Archie was here with me. I'll let him have another;" and feeling for the next stone, he threw it from him sharply. "Frighten the beggar away," he muttered.

But it had the contrary effect of arousing a fresh burst of hisses, stamps, and subdued yells.

"Oh, get out with you, you idgit!" said the young private, in a whisper, to himself. "Wish I could recollect how that big ape Captain Down used to keep chained up went on when he teased it. Chance it," he muttered; and raising both hands to his mouth so as to speak between them, he sent forth his imitation of an angry monkey, spattering through the night air, his utterance being produced with wonderful rapidity:

_Chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chuk, chick! Chick, chuk, chack_!

_Errrrrr_! growled the Malay.

_Chick, chack, chuk, chack, chick, chack, chuk, check, check, chuk_!

snarled the imitation monkey.

What evidently meant in the Malay tongue, "Be off, you ugly beast!" came from below, followed by a pant as of somebody exerting himself; and simultaneously Peter Pegg felt a tug at one leg of his trousers, and a slight scratch which made him dart his left hand down and feel the bamboo staff of a spear which had pa.s.sed right through his garment and had pinned his leg down to the thatch, in which the spear was deeply buried.

"You cowardly beast!" panted Peter softly. "This is getting a fellow's monkey up in reality;" and without pausing to reflect upon what might be the consequences, he began to reach for and tear out every stone he could find, to hurl them with all his might in the direction from which the hissing and growling came.

The first must have gone pretty close to the angry sentry, the second startled him, and the third produced a yell as it struck him full in the back, for he had already begun his retreat; and after sending two or three more with all the vigour produced by anger, Peter Pegg lay back on the roof, listening to the distant pattering of feet, and laughing with suppressed mirth till the tears ran down his cheeks.

"Took me for one of them big monkeys," he panted at last; and, in closer imitation than ever, he sent forth a final _Chick, check, chuk, chick, chick, chack, chack, chack_, after his retreating enemy.

"Don't be a fool, comrade," he said at last. "He can't hear you. Poor old Job Tipsy! He always said me and the governor were just like a couple of schoolboys with our games and larks, and I suppose he was right. Poor old Bully Bounce! But I do wish he was here now to help us two out of this hole, and a dozen of our chaps at his back, for it's rather a different sort of game to what it used to be when we got found out. Here's poor Mister Archie lying down below badly hurt, and me stretched on the top of this attap roof, pinned out like a jolly old c.o.c.k b.u.t.terfly meant for a specimen. Think of it," he muttered, as he sat up and began feeling down his leg. "Shied a spear at me. It hurts, too. Good job it didn't hit me in the middle. It's a bit wet, but it can't be bad. Scratted a bit, and then it went through the leg of my trousers. Well, I call that a narrow escape."

As he muttered to himself he began tugging at the spear-shaft, only about two feet of which stood out above the cloth; and from his cramped position the young private found that, tug as he would, the weapon was too deeply buried in the thick thatch for him to draw it out.

"Well, this 'ere's a nice game," said the lad softly. "Won't come out, won't you? All right! More ways of killing a cat than hanging it. Go in, then;" and reaching upward with both hands, he began to press upon the b.u.t.t of the spear, and drove it a little farther in. "If you can't pull a spear or a harrer out, the best thing to do is to shove it through. That's what I'm a-doing; only, as you may say, I'm walking off it." As he spoke he raised his leg up, holding on to the attap roof the while, gave two or three sharp kicks, and threw his leg off the spear-shaft and let it fall free upon the slope, where he lay now upon his back shaking with laughter.

"Oh dear! Oh dear!" he said. "What a game! Pinned down like a specimen! I can't stop it. Just like it's often been when we have been on the march, feeling half-starved and empty, and I have made the lads turn savage, and bang me on the back, and call me all the fools they could lay their tongues to, as they kept telling me to leave off, when I couldn't. Pinned down like a c.o.c.kchafer! 'Tention! Oh, I say," he gasped out excitedly, "I never thought of that! Here was I wondering how I was to get hold of another spear, and it's come flying at me.

Where are you?"

He felt about till his hand came in contact with about two feet of the haft standing out of the thatch, and he began tugging at it to draw it forth. "Won't come, won't you? All right, then, go;" and catching hold of the bamboo staff with his left hand, he doubled his fist and turned his right into a mallet, thumping the b.u.t.t, which readily yielded and went farther and farther through, till he struck the bamboo and mat together, when a final blow sent the weapon right through, and it was gone.