Chapter XXII In Slumbering Woods — Kep Captured by Savages
Brawny Surgeon McTavish, and almost equally sturdy Stormalong, with Kep, had many a ramble among the woods and hills of New Guinea. They were collecting specimens, they were studying Nature in the concrete. God’s glorious and thrilling fantasia of woods and wilds and water and of rolling tree-clad hills. But into the deepest darkness of the forests they seldom penetrated, tempting though it looked. For it was not merely bright-winged birds and strange mammals that these stately forests gave homes to, but wandering savages, as implacably fierce as any the world contains.
And still, as seen from the sea, these landscapes looked so peaceful and serene, one could scarcely believed that any evil thing could dwell therein. There was a charm to a mind like the doctor’s about its very stillness, that often lured him farther into it than it was at all times safe to venture. Wherever he went, the others would follow.
Creeping one day through the slumbering woods and by the broad river’s banks, they came suddenly upon a somewhat elderly chief, who was seated on a rock, with a fish net depending from a long rod. In the evening of his days he was enjoying himself apparently at this placid sport. With the exception of beads and bangles, and his massive crown of feather-adorned hair, he was naked as the lizards that crawled on the adjoining trees.
Beside him lay bow and arrows and spear, while an ugly knife was fastened to his girdle of rope.
Our heroes had been a good ten miles into the interior that day, and were now returning, Kep carrying specimens of flora and fauna, Stormalong with a wild pig slung over his back.
Fishing is so civil a pastime that they at once threw down their burdens and squatted near the fellow.
A more hideous savage Kep had not yet beheld. Tattooed all over the body, peleles in his ears, a ring of gold attached to one nostril, and the upper lip slit in two to show his terrible red-stained triangular teeth.
One glance at that mouth, and his black hide spotted with red paint, proclaimed him a cannibal.
He clutched his bunch of poisoned arrows, and started to his feet.
“Sit down, my friend,” said McTavish coolly. “I could lift you by the neck, man, and throw you across the boulders into the centre stream. Sit down, friend, and tell me all about yourself.”
This chief grumblingly obeyed.
He had in his youth been kidnapped to Queensland and knew the white man’s speech.
Strangely enough this fellow, like all who have come back from civilization to their native fastnesses, are the fiercest and most wily savages of all.
“What fob you callee me ‘fliend’? I not lub de Engleese.
“The natives are all friends of mine.”
“Ugh! Dat because you one big woman.”
McTavish wore a plain grey kilt and badger-head sporran.
“By gum!” said Stormalong, laughing, “there is enough of you, sir, to make two women instead of one.”
“You big bigee woman, and lub ebery man. Dat is how. But,” he went on, “Fadder-landee1 much more goodee as Bleetish man. Bleetish man wuff—wuff (rough and unkind), he call me, Gobolohlo, one dam niggah. All same Gobolohlo chief from far ober de mountain.”
He struck his painted chest with his fist, to show that he was Gobolohlo, and that he wasn’t to be scorned.
But McTavish appeased him with tobacco, which he began to tear and chew.
“Fadder-landee,” he continued, “he come on soh (shore) in he boat. He seek for Gobolohlo in de fah inteliol (far interior). He touch Gobolohlo, he gibee me mooch dlink to dlink, mooch fine baccy, and so I lub he.
“Den he say to me, Gobolohlo, he say, ‘Fadder-landee not make goodee meat. Engleese man mooch fine long-pig. Fadder-landee no goodee eat. Taste.’ Den I take he hand and lick. Foo—foo. Bad, bad.2 But, ‘poh chief,’ he tellee me now. You lookee pale. All you fightee men lookee sick. Go to de Bleetish side, and get flesh (fresh) air, you soon be bettah after dat.
“So, Gobolohlo he come back. Plenty fightee man yondeh in de bush.”
Soothed by the baccy, Gobolohlo grew more communicative.
“Kill missionaly one day,” he told the surgeon confidentially. “Missionaly fly in bush to hidee he’sef. But my walliols dey soon catchee he, and kill fo’ rost. Ah dat Bleetish missionaly, he make fine pork. Yum! yum!”
He patted his stomach as he spoke.
McTavish was a man of quick action, when he saw his duty clear before him.
He hit that cannibal chief clean off the boulder on which he sat. And before he woke, our heroes had bound and gagged him.
“Leave that wild pig,” said the doctor quietly, “and hoist this wilder pig on your broad back, Stormalong. Why, we’ve caught the very cannibal who killed poor Mr. Tain, just three years ago. And now, lads, let us to our boat. We may be attacked at any moment. Sly dogs those Germans! but they’ve played into our hands this time.”
There was about half a mile of open country near the beach, with a village in its rear, a village of friendlies. If they could but reach this, they thought they would be safe.
However, Kep was sent off in front, to signal the ship for armed assistance. Poor lad, he never reached the shore, and it was not till an hour later that Captain Breezy noticed that there was mischief on shore.
The ship lay in deep water not far off, and the day was singularly quiet and still.
Both McTavish and Stormalong, carried two revolvers each, and the ringing of these, followed by the wild cries of the attacking cannibals, told its own terrible tale.
Never were boats manned and armed more quickly. Hardly three minutes had elapsed, before they were speeding shorewards.
They found the doctor and gunner besieged in the strongest house of the village, into which they had dragged their prisoner Gobolohlo.
A message from the ship, in the shape of a shell, that burst in the rear of the bamboo village, had startled the savages, who imagining they were being surrounded, fled into the forest.
Neither McTavish nor his companion were injured. They had fought with their clubbed rifles, and more than one dead cannibal lay out there on the street of sand to prove their prowess.
The bluejackets chased the enemy a long distance, and giving them pepper, so there was plenty of food for rats and ants in the woods that night.
Meanwhile, where was Kep?
Far enough away by this time. He had been captured by the cannibals, and borne off inland. Indeed, in his haste, he had stumbled right into the arms of natives, who had been hurried to the beach to try to outflank the doctor.
Gobolohlo was placed in irons in the cells, as soon as taken on board, and a sentry set to watch him. No wild beast ever looked more terrible behind bars than did this fearful cannibal.
The mountain savages were in full retreat now, back to the recesses of their own land. Kep, bound hand and foot, was carried on a litter in the vanguard, for even savages have some method in their military madness.
The cannibals kept up their march until nearly midnight, and at last lit fires, and huge ones they were.
Kep, who knew a little of their language, lay for a time in a kind of apathetic stupor. He did not even feel afraid. He had been terribly frightened at first, but knowing what his end must be, and that, as soon as he was bludgeoned, he would be cooked and eaten, all fear had fled. He only hoped it would all be over quickly. He even found himself wondering apathetically on which of the fires the rude gridiron of hard wood would be placed to receive his body.
Then two of the very wildest and most grotesquely tattooed savages approached the spot where he lay. Each had an ugly naked knife in his belt, and one carried a large wooden bowl.
They were coming to kill him. And a knife is so much more awful than a bludgeon.
He closed his eyes, and shuddered a little.
They murder their victims with coolness, too, these cannibals. They are as pitiless, as merciless, as a butcher slaying a lamb. They made him sit up now.
“Be quick, be quick,” cried the poor lad. “Oh God, be quick!” But Kep was mistaken.
The bowl was not to hold his blood. It was filled with a mess of fruit, mixed with cocoa-nut milk, made by rubbing the kernel down in water.
“Dlink,” they told him, and Kep managed to empty the basin, under threats of instant death if he refused.
They now felt him all over, and pinched his arms and legs. Kep was hard and firm, but carried no fat. The boy knew the worst now, he was to be fattened up for a feast.
Tired and weary, he sank into a deep sleep so soon as his captors had left him, and could hardly remember all he had come through, when he at last awoke, just as the red gleams of the newly risen sun shone like fire among the tallest trees.
Again was he fed. This time with some sort of grain, like arrow-root, boiled, and mixed with a little kava.
Camp was then struck, and the march was a long one of some fifty miles, but during the day, he was fed three or four times. And, tied to one of the most brutal-looking of the savages, was led as if he had been a wild beast. He had to walk nearly all the distance. Luckily for him, he was strong enough to stand it, else would he have been clubbed to death. Hope now began to tell him a flattering tale? Was there not a chance of escape. It seemed impossible, but——
The thought of it, anyhow, made the poor prisoner happier.
He had not forgotten his piccolo, the little black flute that had charmed even cobras. They had not taken this away, for he wore that under his jersey, and though his captors had felt it, they evidently thought it was a rib.
His couch by night, was made of green boughs, and his sleep was sound enough.
One day a band of armed savages came shouting to meet them, and then Kep knew that he had reached his new home.
The camp that night was at the foot of a mountain, that towered high and steep for full four thousand feet into the blue sky. It was up to the top of this hill he had to march next morning, and very much surprised he was when he found himself in the crater of an extinct volcano. It was fully a mile in diameter, with a very large building in the centre.
The village—a very quaint one—was built around this palace of Gobolohlo. There he had dwelt with his two wives, who if they were not widows already, would very soon be.
The depths of this crater, and even the sides all around, were covered with bushes and verdure, and adorned by Nature with the rarest and most beautiful of flowers.
Now, right to this palace, Kep was dragged, and introduced to the cannibal queens, who were well clad in short, bright-coloured frocks of calico, with feather-fringed skirts. Both were young, both interesting looking, and one really pretty. Their naked ankles and bare arms were encircled with bands of gold set with precious stones.
They evidently admired the boy, just as a farmer or butcher may admire a calf. For they prodded him with their little fat forefingers, then laughed scornfully and shook their heads.
“He not much meat,” said the younger queen, in English. She had been captured by the recruiters, when a mere child, and carried to Queensland, but was sent back in a few years to her own wild island.
“I’m no good to eat at all, your lovely majesty.”
“In three weeks’ time, though,” she smiled.
Then Kep’s food was brought, his hands were freed, and Gobolohlo’s queens screamed with laughter to behold him eat so heartily, which on this occasion he really did, to please them.
He was ordered to sit down till they should study him a little longer.
He really appeared to afford great fun to their majesties.
But when he took out his piccolo, and begun to breathe his griefs and sorrows into that, their mirth changed into pensive melancholy. They listened enraptured. He changed his tune, and turned on the sailor’s hornpipe. They were all smiles once more, and giving the attendants a sign, they withdrew, and in about half an hour the hall was nearly filled with dancing flower-adorned cannibal maidens.
It was a strange wild scene, and stranger from the fact, that in this case, youth and beauty was dressed in nothing else save flowers and feathers.
At the end of the ball, the younger queen rushed forward and saluted Kep, by rubbing her nose against his.
“You good, good, goodee boy,” she cried. “For tree week you play to me, den——”
“Then what, your majesty?”
“I lub you so much den, dat I eatee you. Plenty ob kava and spice—Yum! yum!”
“This is something to look forward to, with a vengeance,” said Kep to himself.
The next two days and evenings, passed in much the same way.
Their majesties had been told of the capture of their united husband, but it didn’t affect them a great deal.
“Pah!” the younger said, “Gobolohlo good king, but he not make plenty good meat fo’ de Bleetish mans ob war.”
But the very next day, Boona, the younger queen, seemed very sad, and after the boy had done piping, she came and squatted beside him.
“You too good foh kill. All same to-mollow you be kill and eat.”
This was certainly somewhat disquieting news, and he naturally wanted to know why this change of plans had come about.
His voice trembled a little as he spoke.
“De oder queen, she hate pooh Boona. Den she think I lub you vely mooch. She de stronger queen, and so she killee you to-mollow.”
Kep could see now that it was a case of jealousy. Boona laid her naked arm across Kep’s shoulder, and once more rubbed noses.
“Goodeebye,” she said; “only I nebber see you mo, till you dead and roas’, and de odder queen, she eatee all de bes’ bits ob my boy. No let Boona taste.”
For the last two or three nights Kep had been allowed to sleep without the galling fetters, but this evening he was more strongly bound than ever.
He did not close his eyes once. He knew the end had come, and that his messmates would be able only to guess how he had suffered.
It was late next day, when he was dragged from his prison, and made to sit down, not far from a bigger fire than he had yet seen. And the great grid was being got ready.
This was all so horrible, that Kep felt going out of his mind. He could only close his eyes and pray.
Pray for death; delivery, he believed, was out of the question. If they would kill him first; but he had received the news, very unceremoniously given, that he was to be stripped, and tied alive to the gridiron, which would then be lowered over the fire, when the latter was fierce enough.
He had been too deep in thought, and too distrait—he felt that he was going mad—to notice a great cloud that was rising slowly up in the east.
But now the day suddenly grew as dark as night, and the rain came down in torrents, while thunder pealed nearer and nearer, the savages looking like demons in the lightning’s glare.
Then Kep remembered no more. He had fainted away.
When he came to himself again, the darkness all around was intense.
Notes
1 The German Colonist.
2 This German officer had no doubt rubbed his hands with quinine. A good idea when one visits cannibals.