The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Argus Pheasant, by John Charles Beecham This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Argus Pheasant Author: John Charles Beecham Illustrator: George W. Gage Release Date: August 26, 2011 [EBook #37215] Last updated: May 2, 2012 Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ARGUS PHEASANT *** Produced by Katie Hernandez, Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) Cover Cover THE ARGUS PHEASANT The Chinaman's laborious progress through the cane had amused Pg ii The Chinaman's laborious progress through the cane had amused her. She knew why he stepped so carefully THE ARGUS PHEASANT BY JOHN CHARLES BEECHAM Frontispiece by GEORGE W. GAGE [Pg i] New York W. J. Watt & Company PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1918, by W. J. WATT & COMPANY PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOK MANUFACTURERS BROOKLYN, N. Y. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. The Omniscient Sachsen 1 II. Ah Sing Counts His Nails 10 III. Peter Gross is Named Resident25 IV. Koyola's Prayer 35 V. Sachsen's Warning 54 VI. The Pirate League 73 VII. Mynheer Muller Worries 82 VIII. Koyala's Warning 97 IX. The Long Arm of Ah Sing 107 X. Captain Carver Signs 119 XI. Mynheer Muller's Dream 125 XII. Peter Gross's Reception 134 XIII. A Fever Antidote 144 XIV. Koyala's Defiance 154 XV. The Council 165 XVI. Peter Gross's Pledge 173 XVII. The Poisoned Arrow 192 XVIII. A Summons to Sadong 198 XIX. Koyala's Ultimatum 207 XX. Lkath's Conversion 216 XXI. Captured by Pirates 226 XXII. In the Temple 238 XXIII. Ah Sing's Vengeance 245 XXIV. A Rescue 252 XXV. The Fight on the Beach 259 XXVI. "To Half of My Kingdom—" 268 XXVII. A Woman Scorned 274 XXVIII. The Attack on the Fort 285 XXIX. A Woman's Heart 296 XXX. The Governor's Promise 310 [Pg iii] [Pg iv] [1] THE ARGUS PHEASANT Ah, God, for a man with a heart, head, hand, Like some of the simple great ones gone Forever and ever by; One still, strong man in a blatant land, Whatever they call him—what care I?— Aristocrat, democrat, autocrat—one Who can rule and dare not lie! Tennyson. CHAPTER I The Omniscient Sachsen It was very apparent that his Excellency Jonkheer Adriaan Adriaanszoon Van Schouten, governor-general of the Netherlands East Indies, was in a temper. His eyes sparked like an emery-wheel biting cold steel. His thin, sharp-ridged nose rose high and the nostrils quivered. His pale, almost bloodless lips were set in rigid lines over his finely chiseled, birdlike beak with its aggressive Vandyke beard. His hair bristled straight and stiff, like the neck-feathers of a ruffled cock, over the edge of his linen collar. It was this latter evidence of the governor's unpleasant humor that his military associate, General Gysbert Karel Vanden Bosch, observed with growing anxiety. The governor took a pinch of snuff with great deliberation and glared across the big table of his cabinet-room at the general. Vanden Bosch shrank visibly. "Then, my dear generaal," he demanded, "you say we must let these sons of Jazebel burn down my residences, behead my residents, and feed my controlleurs to the crocodiles without interference from the military?" "Ach, no, your excellency!" General Vanden Bosch expostulated hastily. "Not that!" "I fear I have not understood you, my dear general. What do you advise?" The icy sweetness of the choleric Van Schouten sent a cold shiver along the commander's spine. He wriggled nervously in the capacious armchair that he filled so snugly. Quite unconsciously he mumbled to himself the clause which the pious Javanese had added to their prayers since Van Schouten's coming to Batavia: "And from the madness of the orang blanda devil at the paleis, Allah deliver us." "Ha! generaal, what do you say?" the governor exclaimed. Vanden Bosch coughed noisily and rallied his wits. "Ahem, your excellency; ah-hum! It is a problem, as your excellency knows. I could send Colonel Heyns and his regiment to Bulungan, if your excellency so desires. But—ahem—as your excellency knows, all he will find is empty huts. Not a proa on the sea; not a Dyak in his field." "You might as well send that many wooden men!" Van Schouten snapped. The general winced. His portentously solemn features that for forty years had impressed the authorities at The Hague with his sagacity in military affairs became severely grave. Oracularly he suggested: "Would it not be wise, your excellency, to give Mynheer Muller, the controlleur, more time? His last report was very satisfactory. Very satisfactory, indeed!" He smacked his lips at the satisfactoriness thereof. "Donder en bliksem!" the governor swore, crashing his lean fist on the table. "More time for what? The taxes have not been paid for two years. Not a kilo of rice has been grown on our plantations. Not a liter of dammargum has been shipped here. The cane is left to rot uncut. Fire has ravaged the cinchona-groves my predecessors set with such care. Every ship brings fresh reports of piracies, of tribal wars, and head-hunting. How much longer must we possess our souls in patience while these things go on?" The general shook his head with a brave show of regret. "Ach! your excellency," he replied sadly; "he promised so well." "Promises," the governor retorted, "do not pay taxes." Vanden Bosch rubbed his purple nose in perplexity. "I suppose it is the witch-woman again," he remarked, discouragedly. "Who else?" Van Schouten growled. "Always the witch-woman. That spawn of Satan, Koyala, is at the bottom of [2] [3] [4] every uprising we have in Borneo." "That is what we get for letting half-breeds mingle with whites in our mission schools," Vanden Bosch observed bitterly. The governor scowled. "That folly will cost the state five hundred gulden," he remarked. "That is the price I have put on her head." The general pricked up his ears. "H-m, that should interest Mynheer Muller," he remarked. "There is nothing he likes so well as the feel of a guilder between his fingers." The governor snorted. "Neen, generaal," he negatived. "For once he has found a sweeter love than silver. The fool fairly grovels at Koyala's feet, Sachsen tells me." "So?" Vanden Bosch exclaimed with quickened interest. "They say she is very fair." "If I could get my hands on her once, the Argus Pheasant's pretty feathers would molt quickly," Van Schouten snarled. His fingers closed like an eagle's talons. "Argus Pheasant, Bintang Burung, the Star Bird—'tis a sweet-sounding name the Malays have for her," the general remarked musingly. There was a sparkle in his eye—the old warrior had not lost his fondness for a pretty face. "If I was younger," he sighed, "I might go to Bulungan myself." The governor grunted. "You are an old cock that has lost his tail-feathers, generaal," he growled. "This is a task for a young man." The general's chest swelled and his chin perked up jauntily. "I am not so old as you think, your excellency," he retorted with a trace of asperity. "Neen, neen, generaal," the governor negatived, "I cannot let you go—not for your own good name's sake. The gossips of Amsterdam and The Hague would have a rare scandal to prate about if it became whispered around that Gysbert Vanden Bosch was scouring the jungles of Bulungan for a witch-woman with a face and form like Helen of Troy's." The general flushed. His peccadillos had followed him to Java, and he did not like to be reminded of them. "The argus pheasant is too shy a bird to come within gunshot, your excellency," he replied somberly. "It must be trapped." "Ay, and so must she," the governor assented. "That is how she got her name. But you are too seasoned for bait, my dear generaal." He chuckled. Vanden Bosch was too much impressed with his own importance to enjoy being chaffed. Ignoring the thrust, he observed dryly: "Your excellency might try King Saul's plan." "Ha!" the governor exclaimed with interest. "What is that?" Van Schouten prided himself on his knowledge of the Scriptures, and the general could not repress a little smirk of triumph at catching him napping. "King Saul tied David's hands by giving him his daughter to wife," he explained. "In the same way, your excellency might clip the Argus Pheasant's wings by marrying her to one of our loyal servants. It might be managed most satisfactorily. A proper marriage would cause her to forget the brown blood that she hates so bitterly." "It is not her brown blood that she hates, it is her white blood," Van Schouten contradicted. "But who would be the man?" "Why not Mynheer Muller, the controlleur!" Vanden Bosch asked. "From what your excellency says, he would not be unwilling. Then our troubles in Bulungan would be over." Van Schouten scowled thoughtfully. "It would be a good match," the general urged. "He is only common blood—a Marken herring-fisher's son by a Celebes woman. And she"—he shrugged his shoulders—"for all her pretty face and plump body she is Leveque, the French trader's daughter, by a Dyak woman." He licked his lips in relish of the plan. Van Schouten shook his head. "No, I cannot do it," he said. "I could send her to the coffee-plantations—that would be just punishment for her transgressions. But God keep me from sentencing any woman to marry." [5] [6] [7] "But, your excellency," Vanden Bosch entreated. "It is ridiculous, generaal," the governor cut in autocratically. "The argus pheasant does not mate with the vulture." Vanden Bosch's face fell. "Then your excellency must appoint another resident," he said, in evident disappointment. "It will take a strong man to bring those Dyaks to time." Van Schouten looked at him fixedly for several moments. A miserable sensation of having said too much crept over the general. "Ha!" Van Schouten exclaimed. "You say we must have a new resident. That has been my idea, too. What bush-fighter have you that can lead two hundred cut-throats like himself and harry these tigers out of their lairs till they crawl on their bellies to beg for peace?" Inwardly cursing himself for his folly in ceasing to advocate Muller, the general twiddled his thumbs and said nothing. "Well, generaal?" Van Schouten rasped irascibly. "Ahem—you know what troops I have, your excellency. Mostly raw recruits, here scarce three months. There is not a man among them I would trust alone in the bush. After all, it might be wisest to give Mynheer Muller another chance." His cheeks puffed till they were purple. Van Schouten's face flamed. "Enough! Enough!" he roared. "If the military cannot keep our house in order, Sachsen and I will find a man. That is all, generaal. Goedendag!" Vanden Bosch made a hasty and none too dignified exit, damning under his breath the administration that had transferred him from a highly ornamental post in Amsterdam to live with this pepper-pot. He was hardly out of the door before the governor shouted: "Sachsen! Hola, Sachsen!" The sound of the governor's voice had scarcely died in the marbled corridors when Sachsen, the omniscient, the indispensable secretary, bustled into the sanctum. His stooped shoulders were crooked in a perpetual obeisance, and his damp, gray hair was plastered thinly over his ruddy scalp; but the shrewd twinkle in his eyes and the hawklike cast of his nose and chin belied the air of humility he affected. "Sachsen," the governor demanded, the eagle gleaming in his lean, Cæsarian face, "where can I find a man that will bring peace to Bulungan?" The wrinkled features of the all-knowing Sachsen crinkled with a smile of inspiration. "Your excellency," he murmured, bowing low, "there is Peter Gross, freeholder of Batavia." "Peter Gross, Pieter Gross," Van Schouten mused, his brow puckered with a thoughtful frown. "The name seems to have slipped my memory. What has Peter Gross, freeholder of Batavia, done to merit such an appointment at our hands, Sachsen?" The secretary bowed again, punctiliously. "Your excellency perhaps remembers," he reminded, "that it was Peter Gross who rescued Lieutenant Hendrik de Koren and twelve men from the pirates of Lombock." "Ha!" the governor exclaimed, his stern features relaxing a trifle. "Now, Sachsen, answer me truthfully, has this Peter Gross an eye for women?" The secretary bent low. "Your excellency, the fairest flowers of Batavia are his to pick and choose. The good God has given him a brave heart, a comely face, and plenty of flesh to cover his bones. But his only mistress is the sea." "If I should send him to Bulungan, would that she-devil, Koyala, make the same fool of him that she has of Muller?" the governor demanded sharply. "Your excellency, the angels above would fail sooner than he." The governor's fist crashed on the table with a resounding thwack. "Then he is the man we need!" he exclaimed. "Where shall I find this Peter Gross, Sachsen?" "Your excellency, he is now serving as first mate of the Yankee barkentine, Coryander, anchored in this port. He was here at the paleis only a moment ago, inquiring for news of three of his crew who had exceeded their shore leave. I think he has gone to Ah Sing's rumah makan, in the Chinese campong." Van Schouten sprang from his great chair of state like a cockerel fluttering from a roost. He licked his thin lips and [8] [9] curved them into a smile. "Sachsen," he said, "except myself, you are the only man in Java that knows anything. My hat and coat, Sachsen, and my cane!" CHAPTER II Ah Sing Counts his Nails Captain Threthaway, of the barkentine, Coryander, of Boston, should have heeded the warning he received from his first mate, Peter Gross, to keep away from the roadstead of Batavia. He had no particular business in that port. But an equatorial sun, hot enough to melt the marrow in a man's bones, made the Coryander's deck a blistering griddle; there was no ice on board, and the water in the casks tasted foul as bilge. So the captain let his longing for iced tea and the cool depths of a palm-grove get the better of his judgment. Passing Timor, Floris, and the other links in the Malayan chain, Captain Threthaway looked longingly at the deeply shaded depths of the mangrove jungles. The lofty tops of the cane swayed gently to a breeze scarcely perceptible on the Coryander's sizzling deck. When the barkentine rounded Cape Karawang, he saw a bediamonded rivulet leap sheer off a lofty cliff and lose itself in the liana below. It was the last straw; the captain felt he had to land and taste ice on his tongue again or die. Calling his first mate, he asked abruptly: "Can we victual at Batavia as cheaply as at Singapore, Mr. Gross?" Peter Gross looked at the shore-line thoughtfully. "One place is as cheap as the other, Mr. Threthaway; but if it's my opinion you want, I advise against stopping at Batavia." The captain frowned. "Why, Mr. Gross?" he asked sharply. "Because we'd lose our crew, and Batavia's a bad place to pick up another one. That gang for'ard isn't to be trusted where there's liquor to be got. 'Twouldn't be so bad to lose a few of them at Singapore—there's always English- speaking sailors there waiting for a ship to get home on; but Batavia's Dutch. We might have to lay around a week." "I don't think there's the slightest danger of desertions," Captain Threthaway replied testily. "What possible reason could any of our crew have to leave?" "The pay is all right, and the grub is all right; there's no kicking on those lines," Peter Gross said, speaking guardedly. "But most of this crew are drinking men. They're used to their rations of grog regular. They've been without liquor since we left Frisco, except what they got at Melbourne, and that was precious little. Since the water fouled on us, they're ready for anything up to murder and mutiny. There'll be no holding them once we make port." Captain Threthaway flushed angrily. His thin, ascetic jaw set with Puritan stubbornness as he retorted: "When I can't sail a ship without supplying liquor to the crew, I'll retire, Mr. Gross." "Don't misunderstand me, captain," Peter Gross replied, with quiet patience. "I'm not disagreeing with your teetotaler principles. They improve a crew if you've got the right stock to work with. But when you take grog away from such dock-sweepings as Smith and Jacobson and that little Frenchman, Le Beouf, you take away the one thing on earth they're willing to work for. We had all we could do to hold them in hand at Melbourne, and after the contrary trades we've bucked the past week, and the heat, their tongues are hanging out for a drop of liquor." "Let them dare come back drunk," the captain snapped angrily. "I know what will cure them." "They won't come back," Peter Gross asserted calmly. "Then we'll go out and get them," Captain Threthaway said grimly. "They'll be where they can't be found," Peter Gross replied. Captain Threthaway snorted impatiently. "Look here, captain!" Peter Gross exclaimed, facing his skipper squarely. "Batavia is my home when I'm not at sea. I know its ins and outs. Knowing the town, and knowing the crew we've got, I'm sure a stop there will be a mighty unpleasant experience all around. There's a Chinaman there, Ah Sing, a public-house proprietor and a crimp, that has runners to meet every boat. Once a man goes into his rumah makan, he's as good as lost until the next skipper comes [10] [11] [12] [13] along short-handed and puts up the price." Captain Threthaway smiled confidently. "Poor as the crew is, Mr. Gross, there's no member of it will prefer lodging in a Chinese crimp's public house ten thousand miles from home to his berth here." "They'll forget his color when they taste his hot rum," Peter Gross returned bruskly. "And once they drink it, they'll forget everything else. Ah Sing is the smoothest article that ever plaited a queue, and they don't make them any slicker than they do in China." Captain Threthaway's lips pinched together in irritation. "There are always the authorities," he remarked pettishly, to end the controversy. Peter Gross restrained a look of disgust with difficulty. "Yes, there are always the authorities," he conceded. "But in the Chinese campong they're about as much use as a landlubber aloft in a blow. The campong is a little republic in itself, and Ah Sing is the man that runs it. If the truth was known, I guess he's the boss Chinaman of the East Indies—pirate, trader, politician—anything he can make a guilder at. From his rum-shop warrens run into every section of Chinatown, and they're so well hid that the governor, though he's sharp as a weasel and by all odds the best man the Dutch ever had here, can't find them. It's the real port of missing men." Captain Threthaway looked shoreward, where dusky, breech-clouted natives were resting in the cool shade of the heavy-leafed mangroves. A bit of breeze stirred just then, bringing with it the rich spice-grove and jungle scents of the thickly wooded island. A fierce longing for the shore seized the captain. He squared his shoulders with decision. "I'll take the chance, Mr. Gross," he said. "This heat is killing me. You may figure on twenty-four hours in port." Twelve hours after the Coryander cast anchor in Batavia harbor, Smith, Jacobson, and Le Beouf were reported missing. When Captain Threthaway, for all his Boston upbringing, had exhausted a prolific vocabulary, he called his first mate. "Mr. Gross," he said, "the damned renegades are gone. Do you think you can find them?" Long experience in the vicissitudes of life, acquired in that best school of all, the forecastle, had taught Peter Gross the folly of saying, "I told you so." Therefore he merely replied: "I'll try, sir." So it befell that he sought news of the missing ones at the great white stadhuis, where the Heer Sachsen, always his friend, met him and conceived the inspiration for his prompt recommendation to the governor-general. Peter Gross ambled on toward Ah Sing's rumah makan without the slightest suspicion he was being followed. On his part, Governor-General Van Schouten was content to let his quarry walk on unconscious of observation while he measured the man. "God in Israel, what a man!" his excellency exclaimed admiringly, noting Peter Gross's broad shoulders and stalwart thighs. "If he packs as much brains inside his skull as he does meat on his bones, there are some busy days ahead for my Dyaks." He smacked his lips in happy anticipation. Ah Sing's grog-shop, with its colonnades and porticoes and fussy gables and fantastic cornices terminating in pigtail curlicues, was a squalid place for all the ornamentation cluttered on it. Peter Gross observed its rubbishy surroundings with ill-concealed disgust. "'Twould be a better Batavia if some one set fire to the place," he muttered to himself. "Yet the law would call it arson." Looking up, he saw Ah Sing seated in one of the porticoes, and quickly masked his face to a smile of cordial greeting, but not before the Chinaman had detected his ill humor. There was a touch of three continents in Ah Sing's appearance. He sat beside a table, in the American fashion; he smoked a long-stemmed hookah, after the Turkish fashion, and he wore his clothes after the Chinese fashion. The bland innocence of his pudgy face and the seraphic mildness of his unblinking almond eyes that peeped through slits no wider than the streak of a charcoal-pencil were as the guilelessness of Mother Eve in the garden. Motionless as a Buddha idol he sat, except for occasional pulls at the hookah. "Good-morning, Ah Sing," Peter Gross remarked happily, as he mounted the colonnade. The tiny slits through which Ah Sing beheld the pageantry of a sun-baked world opened a trifle wider. "May Allah bless thee, Mr. Gross," he greeted impassively. Peter Gross pulled a chair away from one of the other tables and placed it across the board from Ah Sing. Then he succumbed to it with a sigh of gentle ease. [14] [15] [16] "A hot day," he panted, and fanned himself as though he found the humidity unbearable. "Belly hot," Ah Sing gravely agreed in a guttural voice that sounded from unfathomable abysses. "A hot day for a man that's tasted no liquor for nigh three months," Peter Gross amended. "You makee long trip?" Ah Sing inquired politely. Peter Gross's features molded themselves into an expression eloquently appreciative of his past miseries. "That's altogether how you take it, Ah Sing," he replied. "From Frisco to Melbourne to Batavia isn't such a thunderin' long ways, not to a man that's done the full circle three times. But when you make the voyage with a Methodist captain who doesn't believe in grog, it's the longest since Captain Cook's. Ah Sing, my throat's dryer than a sou'east monsoon. Hot toddy for two." Ah Sing clapped his hands and uttered a magic word or two in Chinese. A Cantonese waiter paddled swiftly outside, bearing a lacquered tray and two steaming glasses. One he placed before Ah Sing and the other before Peter Gross, who tossed a coin on the table. "Pledge your health, sir," Peter Gross remarked and reached across the board to clink glasses with his Chinese friend. Ah Sing lifted his glass to meet the sailor's and suddenly found it snaked out of his hands by a deft motion of Peter Gross's middle finger. Gross slid his own glass across the table toward Ah Sing. "If you don't mind," he remarked pleasantly. "Your waiter might have mistaken me for a plain A. B., and I've got to get back to my ship to-night." Ah Sing's bland and placid face remained expressionless as a carved god's. But he left the glass stand, untasted, beside him. The Coryander's mate sipped his liquor and sank deeper into his chair. He studied with an air of affectionate interest the long lane of quaintly colonnaded buildings that edged the city within a city, the Chinese campong. Pigtailed Orientals, unmindful of the steaming heat, squirmed across the scenery. Ten thousand stenches were compounded into one, in which the flavor of garlic predominated. Peter Gross breathed the heavy air with a smile of reminiscent pleasure and dropped another notch into the chair. "It feels good to be back ashore again for a spell, Ah Sing," he remarked. "A nice, cool spot like this, with nothing to do and some of your grog under the belt, skins a blistery deck any day. I don't wonder so many salts put up here." Back of the curtain of fat through which they peered, Ah Sing's oblique eyes quivered a trifle as they watched the sailor keenly. "By the way," Peter Gross observed, stretching his long legs out to the limit of their reach, "you haven't seen any of my men, have you? Smith, he's pock-marked and has a cut over his right eye; Jacobson, a tall Swede, and Le Beouf, a little Frenchman with a close-clipped black mustache and beard?" Ah Sing gravely cudgeled his memory. "None of your men," he assured, "was here." Peter Gross's face fell. "That's too bad!" he exclaimed in evident disappointment. "I thought sure I'd find 'em here. You're sure you haven't overlooked them? That Frenchie might call for a hop; we picked him out of a hop-joint at Frisco." "None your men here," Ah Sing repeated gutturally. Peter Gross rumpled his tousled hair in perplexity. "We-el," he drawled unhappily, "if those chaps don't get back on shipboard by nightfall I'll have to buy some men from you, Ah Sing. Have y' got three good hands that know one rope from another?" "Two men off schooner Marianna," Ah Sing replied in his same thick monotone. "One man, steamer Callee-opie. Good strong man. Work hard." "You stole 'em, I s'pose?" Peter Gross asked pleasantly. Ah Sing's heavy jowls waggled in gentle negation. "No stealum man," he denied quietly. "Him belly sick. Come here, get well. Allie big, strong man." "How much a head?" "Twlenty dlolla." "F. O. B. the Coryander and no extra charges?" [17] [18] [19] Ah Sing's inscrutable face screwed itself into a maze of unreadable wrinkles and lines. "Him eat heap," he announced. "Five dlolla more for board." "You go to blazes," Peter Gross replied cheerfully. "I'll look up a couple of men somewhere else or go short-handed if I have to." Ah Sing made no reply and his impassive face did not alter its expressionless fixity. Peter Gross lazily pulled himself up in his chair and extended his right hand across the table. A ring with a big bloodstone in the center, a bloodstone cunningly chiseled and marked, rested on the middle finger. "See that ring, Ah Sing?" he asked. "I got that down to Mauritius. What d'ye think it's worth?" Ah Sing's long, claw-like fingers groped avariciously toward the ring. His tiny, fat-encased eyes gleamed with cupidity. With a quick, cat-like movement, Peter Gross gripped one of the Chinaman's hands. "Don't pull," he cautioned quickly as Ah Sing tried to draw his hand away. "I was going to tell you that there's a drop of adder's poison inside the bloodstone that runs down a little hollow pin if you press the stone just so—" He moved to illustrate. "No! No!" Ah Sing shrieked pig-like squeals of terror. "Just send one of your boys for my salts, will you?" Peter Gross requested pleasantly. "I understand they got here yesterday morning and haven't been seen to leave. Talk English—no China talk, savvy?" A flash of malevolent fury broke Ah Sing's mask of impassivity. The rage his face expressed caused Peter Gross to grip his hand the harder and look quickly around for a possible danger from behind. They were alone. Peter Gross moved a finger toward the stone, and Ah Sing capitulated. At his shrill cry there was a hurried rustle from within. Peter Gross kept close grip on the Chinaman's hand until he heard the shuffling tramp of sailor feet. Smith, Jacobson and Le Beouf, blinking sleepily, were herded on the portico by two giant Thibetans. Peter Gross shoved the table and Ah Sing violently back and leaped to his feet. "You'll—desert—will you?" he exclaimed. Each word was punctuated by a swift punch on the chin of one of the unlucky sailors and an echoing thud on the floor. Smith, Jacobson, and Le Beouf lay neatly cross-piled on one of Ah Sing's broken chairs. "I'll pay for the chair," Peter Gross declared, jerking his men to their feet and shoving them down the steps. Ah Sing shrilled an order in Chinese. The Thibetan giants leaped for Peter Gross, who sprang out of their reach and put his back to the wall. In his right hand a gun flashed. "Ah Sing, I'll take you first," he shouted. The screen separating them from the adjoining portico was violently pushed aside. "Ah Sing!" exclaimed a sharp, authoritative voice. Ah Sing looked about, startled. The purpled fury his face expressed sickened to a mottled gray. Adriaan Adriaanszoon Van Schouten, governor-general of Java, leaning lightly on his cane, frowned sternly at the scene of disorder. At a cry from their master the two Thibetans backed away from Peter Gross, who lowered his weapon. "Is it thus you observe our laws, Ah Sing?" Van Schouten demanded coldly. Ah Sing licked his lips. "Light of the sun—" he began, but the governor interrupted shortly: "The magistrate will hear your explanations." His eagle eyes looked penetratingly upon Peter Gross, who looked steadfastly back. "Sailor, you threatened to poison this man," the governor accused harshly, indicating Ah Sing. "Your excellency, that was bluff," Peter Gross replied. "The ring is as harmless as your excellency's own." Van Schouten's eyes twinkled. "What is your name, sailor, and your ship?" he demanded. "Peter Gross, your excellency, first mate of the barkentine Coryander of Boston, now lying in your excellency's harbor of Batavia." "Ah Sing," Van Schouten rasped sternly, "if these drunken louts are not aboard their ship by nightfall, you go to the coffee-fields." Ah Sing's gimlet eyes shrank to pin-points. His face was expressionless, but his whole body seemed to shake with suppressed emotion as he choked in guttural Dutch: [20] [21] [22] "Your excellency shall be obeyed." He salaamed to the ground. Van Schouten glared at Peter Gross. "Mynheer Gross, the good name of our fair city is very dear to us," he said sternly. "Scenes of violence like this do it much damage. I would have further discourse with you. Be at the paleis within the hour." "I shall be there, your excellency," Peter Gross promised. The governor shifted his frown to Ah Sing. "As for you, Ah Sing, I have heard many evil reports of this place," he said. "Let me hear no more." While Ah Sing salaamed again, the governor strode pompously away, followed at a respectful distance by Peter Gross. It was not until they had disappeared beyond a curve in the road that Ah Sing let his face show his feelings. Then an expression of malignant fury before which even the two Thibetans quailed, crossed it. He uttered a harsh command to have the débris removed. The Thibetans jumped forward in trembling alacrity. Without giving them another glance he waddled into the building, into a little den screened off for his own use. From a patent steel safe of American make he took an ebony box, quaintly carved and colored in glorious pinks and yellows with a flower design. Opening this, he exposed a row of glass vials resting on beds of cotton. Each vial contained some nail parings. He took out the vials one by one, looked at their labels inscribed in Chinese characters, and placed them on an ivory tray. As he read each label a curious smile of satisfaction spread over his features. When he had removed the last vial he sat at his desk, dipped a pen into India ink, and wrote two more labels in similar Chinese characters. When the ink had dried he placed these on two empty vials taken from a receptacle on his desk. The vials were placed with the others in the ebony box and locked in the safe. The inscriptions he read on the labels were the names of men who had died sudden and violent deaths in the East Indies while he had lived at Batavia. The labels he filled out carried the names of Adriaan Adriaanszoon Van Schouten and Peter Gross. CHAPTER III Peter Gross is Named Resident "Sailor, the penalty for threatening the life of any citizen is penal servitude on the state's coffee-plantations." The governor's voice rang harshly, and he scowled across the big table in his cabinet-room at the Coryander's mate sitting opposite him. His hooked nose and sharp-pointed chin with its finely trimmed Van Dyke beard jutted forward rakishly. "I ask no other justice than your excellency's own sense of equity suggests," Peter Gross replied quietly. "H'mm!" the governor hummed. He looked at the Coryander's mate keenly for a few moments through half-closed lids. Suddenly he said: "And what if I should appoint you a resident, sailor?" Peter Gross's lips pressed together tightly, but otherwise he gave no sign of his profound astonishment at the governor's astounding proposal. Sinking deeper into his chair until his head sagged on his breast, he deliberated before replying. "Your excellency is in earnest?" "I do not jest on affairs of state, Mynheer Gross. What is your answer?" Peter Gross paused. "Your excellency overwhelms me—" he began, but Van Schouten cut him short. "Enough! When I have work to do I choose the man who I think can do it. Then you accept?" "Your excellency, to my deep regret I must most respectfully decline." A look of blank amazement spread over the governor's face. Then his eyes blazed ominously. "Decline! Why?" he roared. "For several reasons," Peter Gross replied with disarming mildness. "In the first place I am under contract with Captain Threthaway of the Coryander—" "I will arrange that with your captain," the governor broke in. [23] [24] [25] [26] "In the second place I am neither a soldier nor a politician—" "That is for me to consider," the governor retorted. "In the third place, I am a citizen of the United States and therefore not eligible to any civil appointment from the government of the Netherlands." "Donder en bliksem!" the governor exclaimed. "I thought you were a freeholder here." "I am," Peter Gross admitted. "The land I won is at Riswyk. I expect to make it my home when I retire from the sea." "How long have you owned that land?" "For nearly seven years." The governor stroked his beard. "You talk Holland like a Hollander, Mynheer Gross," he observed. "My mother was of Dutch descent," Peter Gross explained. "I learned the language from her." "Good!" Van Schouten inclined his head with a curt nod of satisfaction. "Half Holland is all Holland. We can take steps to make you a citizen at once." "I don't care to surrender my birthright." Peter Gross negatived quietly. "What!" Van Schouten shouted. "Not for a resident's post? And eight thousand guilders a year? And a land grant in Java that will make you rich for life if you make those hill tribes stick to their plantations? What say you to this, Mynheer Gross?" His lips curved with a smile of anticipation. "The offer is tempting and the honor great," Peter Gross acknowledged quietly. "But I can not forget I was born an American." Van Schouten leaned back in his chair with a look of astonishment. "You refuse?" he asked incredulously. "I am sorry, your excellency!" Peter Gross's tone was unmistakably firm. "You refuse?" the governor repeated, still unbelieving. "Eight—thousand—guilders! And a land grant that will make you rich for life!" "I am an American, and American I shall stay." The governor's eyes sparkled with admiration. "By the beard of Orange!" he exclaimed, "it is no wonder you Yankees have sucked the best blood of the world into your country." He leaned forward confidentially. "Mynheer Gross, I cannot appoint you resident if you refuse to take the oath of allegiance to the queen. But I can make you special agent of the gouverneur-generaal. I can make you a resident in fact, if not in name, of a country larger than half the Netherlands, larger than many of your own American States. I can give you the rewards I have pledged you, a fixed salary and the choice of a thousand hectares of our fairest state lands in Java. What do you say?" He leaned forward belligerently. In that posture his long, coarse hair rose bristly above his neck, giving him something of the appearance of a gamecock with feathers ruffled. It was this peculiarity that first suggested the name he was universally known by throughout the Sundas, "De Kemphaan" (The Gamecock). "To what province would you appoint me?" Peter Gross asked slowly. The governor hesitated. With the air of a poker player forced to show his hand he confessed: "It is a difficult post, mynheer, and needs a strong man as resident. It is the residency of Bulungan, Borneo." There was the faintest flicker in Peter Gross's eyes. Van Schouten watched him narrowly. In the utter stillness that followed the governor could hear his watch tick. Peter Gross rose abruptly, leaped for the door, and threw it open. He looked straight into the serene, imperturbable face of Chi Wung Lo, autocrat of the governor's domestic establishment. Chi Wung bore a delicately lacquered tray of Oriental design on which were standing two long, thin, daintily cut glasses containing cooling limes that bubbled fragrantly. Without a word he swept grandly in and placed the glasses on the table, one before the governor, and the other before Peter Gross's vacant chair. "Ha!" Van Schouten exclaimed, smacking his lips. "Chi Wung, you peerless, priceless servant, how did you guess our needs?" With a bland bow and never a glance at Peter Gross, Chi Wung strutted out in Oriental dignity, carrying his empty tray. Peter Gross closed the door carefully, and walked slowly back. [27] [28] [29] "I was about to say, your excellency," he murmured, "that Bulungan has not a happy reputation." "It needs a strong man to rule it," the governor acknowledged, running his glance across Peter Gross's broad shoulders in subtle compliment. "Those who have held the post of resident there found early graves." "You are young, vigorous. You have lived here long enough to know how to escape the fevers." "There are worse enemies in Bulungan than the fevers," Peter Gross replied. "It is not for nothing that Bulungan is known as the graveyard of Borneo." The governor glanced at Peter Gross's strong face and stalwart form regretfully. "Your refusal is final?" he asked. "On the contrary, if your excellency will meet one condition, I accept," Peter Gross replied. The governor put his glass down sharply and stared at the sailor. "You accept this post?" he demanded. "Upon one condition, yes!" "What is that condition?" "That I be allowed a free hand." "H'mm!" Van Schouten drew a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. The sharp, Julian cast of countenance was never more pronounced, and the eagle eyes gleamed inquiringly, calculatingly. Peter Gross looked steadily back. The minutes passed and neither spoke. "Why do you want to go there?" the governor exclaimed suddenly. He leaned forward in his chair till his eyes burned across a narrow two feet into Peter Gross's own. The strong, firm line of Peter Gross's lips tightened. He rested one elbow on the table and drew nearer the governor. His voice was little more than a murmur as he said: "Your excellency, let me tell you the story of Bulungan." The governor's face showed surprise. "Proceed," he directed. "Six years ago, when your excellency was appointed governor-general of the Netherlands East Indies," Peter Gross began, "Bulungan was a No Man's land, although nominally under the Dutch flag. The pirates that infested the Celebes sea and the straits of Macassar found ports of refuge in its jungle-banked rivers and marsh mazes where no gun-boat could find them. The English told your government that if it did not stamp out piracy and subjugate the Dyaks, it would. That meant loss of the province to the Dutch crown. Accordingly you sent General Van Heemkerken there with eight hundred men who marched from the lowlands to the highlands and back again, burning every village they found, but meeting no Dyaks except old men and women too helpless to move. General Van Heemkerken reported to you that he had pacified the country. On his report you sent Mynheer Van Scheltema there as resident, and Cupido as controlleur. Within six months Van Scheltema was bitten by an adder placed in his bedroom and Cupido was assassinated by a hill Dyak, who threw him out of a dugout into a river swarming with crocodiles. "Lieve hemel, no!" Van Schouten cried. "Van Scheltema and Cupido died of the fevers." "So it was reported to your excellency," Peter Gross replied gravely. "I tell you the facts." The governor's thin, spiked jaw shot out like a vicious thorn and his teeth clicked. "Go on," he directed sharply. "For a year there was neither resident nor controlleur at Bulungan. Then the pirates became so bold that you again took steps to repress them. The stockade at the village of Bulungan was enlarged and the garrison was increased to fifty men. Lieutenant Van Slyck, the commandant, was promoted to captain. A new resident was appointed, Mynheer de Jonge, a very dear friend of your excellency. He was an old man, estimable and honest, but ill-fitted for such a post, a failure in business, and a failure as a resident. Time after time your excellency wrote him concerning piracies, hillmen raids, and head-hunting committed in his residency or the adjoining seas. Each time he replied that your excellency must be mistaken, that the pirates and head-hunters came from other districts." The governor's eyes popped in amazement. "How do you know this?" he exclaimed, but Peter Gross ignored the question. "Finally about two years ago Mynheer de Jonge, through an accident, learned that he had been deceived by those he had trusted, had a right to trust. A remark made by a drunken native opened his eyes. One night he called out Captain Van Slyck and the latter's commando and made a flying raid. He all but surprised a band of pirates looting a captured [30] [31] [32] schooner and might have taken them had they not received a warning of his coming. That raid made him a marked man. Within two weeks he was poisoned by being pricked as he slept with a thorn dipped in the juice of the deadly upas tree." "He was a suicide!" the governor exclaimed, his face ashen. "They brought me a note in his own handwriting." "In which it was stated that he killed himself because he felt he had lost your excellency's confidence?" "You know that, too?" Van Schouten whispered huskily. "Your excellency has suffered remorse without cause," Peter Gross declared quietly. "The note is a forgery." The governor's hands gripped the edge of the table. "You can prove that?" he cried. "For the present your excellency must be satisfied with my word. As resident of Bulungan I hope to secure proofs that will satisfy a court of justice." The governor gazed at Peter Gross intently. A conflict of emotions, amazement, unbelief, and hope were expressed on his face. "Why should I believe you?" he demanded fiercely. Peter Gross's face hardened. The sternness of the magistrate was on his brow as he replied: "Your excellency remembers the schooner Tetrina, attacked by Chinese and Dyak pirates off the coast of Celebes three years ago? All her crew were butchered except two left on the deck that night for dead. I was one of the two, your excellency. My dead comrades have left me a big debt to pay. That is why I will go to Bulungan." The governor rose. Decision was written on his brow. "Meet us here to-night, Mynheer Gross," he said. "There is much to discuss with Mynheer Sachsen before you leave. God grant you may be the instrument of His eternal justice." Peter Gross raised a hand of warning. "Sometimes the very walls have ears, your excellency," he cautioned. "If I am to be resident of Bulungan no word of the appointment must leak out until I arrive there." CHAPTER IV Koyala's Prayer It was a blistering hot day in Bulungan. The heavens were molten incandescence. The muddy river that bisected the town wallowed through its estuary, a steaming tea-kettle. The black muck-fields baked and flaked under the torrid heat. The glassy surface of the bay, lying within the protecting crook of a curling tail of coral reef, quivered under the impact of the sun's rays like some sentient thing. In the village that nestled where fresh and salt water met, the streets were deserted, almost lifeless. Gaunt pariah dogs, driven by the acid-sharp pangs of a never-satiated hunger, sniffed among the shadows of the bamboo and palmleaf huts, their backs arched and their tails slinking between their legs. Too weak to grab their share of the spoil in the hurly- burly, they scavenged in these hours of universal inanity. The doors of the huts were tightly closed—barricaded against the heat. The merchant in his dingy shop, the fisherman in his house on stilts, and the fashioner of metals in his thatched cottage in the outskirts slept under their mats. Apoplexy was the swift and sure fate of those who dared the awful torridity. Dawn had foretold the heat. The sun shot above the purple and orange waters of the bay like a conflagration. The miasmal vapors that clustered thickly about the flats by night gathered their linen and fled like the hunted. They were scurrying upstream when Bogoru, the fisherman, walked out on his sampan landing. He looked at the unruffled surface of the bay, and then looked upward quickly at the lane of tall kenari trees between the stockade and government buildings on an elevation a short distance back of the town. The spindly tops of the trees pointed heavenward with the rigidity of church spires. "There will be no chaetodon sold at the visschersmarkt (fishmart) to-day," he observed. "Kismet!" With a patient shrug of his shoulders he went back to his hut and made sure there was a plentiful supply of sirih and cooling limes on hand. In the fruit-market Tagotu, the fruiterer, set out a tempting display of mangosteen, durian, dookoo, and rambootan, pineapples, and pomegranates, jars of agar-agar, bowls of rice, freshly cooked, and pitchers of milk. [33] [34] [35] [36] The square was damp from the heavy night dew when he set out the first basket, it was dry as a fresh-baked brick when he put out the last. The heavy dust began to flood inward. Tagotu noticed with dismay how thin the crowd was that straggled about the market-place. Chepang, his neighbor, came out of his stall and observed: "The monsoon has failed again. Bunungan will stay in his huts to-day." "It is the will of Allah," Tagotu replied patiently. Putting aside his offerings, he lowered the shades of his shop and composed himself for a siesta. On the hill above the town, where the rude fort and the government buildings gravely faced the sea, the heat also made itself felt. The green blinds of the milk-white residency building, that was patterned as closely as tropical conditions would permit after the quaint architecture of rural Overysel, were tightly closed. The little cluster of residences around it, the controlleur's house and the homes of Marinus Blauwpot and Wang Fu, the leading merchants of the place, were similarly barricaded. For "Amsterdam," the fashionable residential suburb of Bulungan village, was fighting the same enemy as "Rotterdam," the town below, an enemy more terrible than Dyak blow-pipes and Dyak poisoned arrows, the Bornean sun. Like Bogoru, the fisherman, and Tagotu, the fruit-vender, Cho Seng, Mynheer Muller's valet and cook, had seen the threat the sunrise brought. The sun's copper disc was dyeing the purple and blue waters of the bay with vermilion and magentas when he pad-padded out on the veranda of the controlleur's house. He was clad in the meticulously neat brown jeans that he wore at all times and occasions except funeral festivals, and in wicker sandals. With a single sweep of his eyes he took in the kenari-tree-lined land that ran to the gate of the stockade where a sleepy sentinel, hunched against a pert brass cannon, nodded his head drowsily. The road was tenantless. He shot another glance down the winding pathway that led by the houses of Marinus Blauwpot and Wang Fu to the town below. That also was unoccupied. Stepping off the veranda, he crossed over to an unshaded spot directly in front of the house and looked intently seaward to where a junk lay at anchor. The brown jeans against the milk-white paint of the house threw his figure in sharp relief. Cho Seng waited until a figure showed itself on the deck of the junk. Then he shaded his eye with his arm. The Chinaman on the deck of the junk must have observed the figure of his fellow countryman on the hill, for he also shaded his eyes with his arm. Cho Seng looked quickly to the right—to the left. There was no one stirring. The sentinel at the gate drowsed against the carriage of the saucy brass cannon. Shading his eyes once more with a quick gesture, Cho Seng walked ten paces ahead. Then he walked back five paces. Making a sharp angle he walked five paces to one side. Then he turned abruptly and faced the jungle. The watcher on the junk gave no sign that he had seen this curious performance. But as Cho Seng scuttled back into the house, he disappeared into the bowels of the ugly hulk. An hour passed before Cho Seng reappeared on the veranda. He cast only a casual glance at the junk and saw that it was being provision...