"There he is! Do you see him?"
Smith"s hand stole mechanically to his hip pocket, where he kept his revolver. Then he smiled, remembering that the chances of stopping an orang-outang with a revolver bullet were about one in ten thousand.
"I don"t see him, mister."
"He has disappeared. But, my word, Roddy, there"s another, and another--four or five; look at them, in the undergrowth yonder. I don"t like this. They"re savage beasts if offended, and if they attack us we shall be in rather a tight corner."
He rose, keeping his eye on the spot where the ape-like forms had shown themselves for an instant, to vanish again. As his eye became accustomed to the gloomy depths of the forest, he became still more alarmed to see a number of black, apish faces at various points among the thick undergrowth surrounding the clearing. Another form flitted across the thin open s.p.a.ce in which he had seen the first.
"By George! he"s got a bow in his hand. They"re men! This is worse still. The orang-outang is bad enough, but he avoids men, I believe, unless interfered with or alarmed. These forest savages are dead shots with their arrows, and they"ll look on us as intruders. If they"re as spiteful as most of their kind we shall have trouble. Get your revolver ready, but we must pretend we haven"t noticed them. You"ve got to replace those plugs; do it as quickly as you can. Don"t look round; I"ll keep guard."
He saw several of the savages pa.s.s across in the same direction as the first, and now he noticed, what had escaped him before, that they were diminutive creatures, certainly not more than four feet high. He had clearly stumbled upon a settlement of forest pigmies. From what he had read of pigmy races he knew that it required extreme patience and a great expenditure of time to win their confidence. That was out of the question now. His first impulse was to hail them, and try to make friends of them by offering some small present; but he checked himself as the thought flashed upon him that a movement on his part might startle them and provoke a discharge of their tiny arrows, which were probably poisoned. He could not doubt they had seen him long before he had seen them, and had been for some time playing the part of silent spectators, being kept at a distance, perhaps, by the aspect of the strange object which they had observed descending among them from the sky. It must be sufficiently alarming to their untutored eyes. But after a time their dread seemed to be overpowered by curiosity or hostility, and Smith saw, with alarm, that the little figures were gradually drawing nearer, flitting silently as shadows from tree to tree, and hiding themselves so effectually, even when they came to closer quarters, that nothing but the flicker of a brownish form among the undergrowth, or a round black head projecting from tree or bush, betrayed their presence.
"Nearly done, Roddy?" he asked, without turning.
"Pretty near."
With an outward calmness that corresponded little to his inward sensations Smith lit a cigarette, racking his wits for some means of keeping the pigmies at a distance without provoking a cloud of arrows or a dash in force. The half-circle was gradually becoming narrower.
He fancied that their silent movements were checked when he began to smoke, and this suggested to him that an appeal to their curiosity might hold them intent or awestruck until Rodier had finished his task.
"How much longer, Roddy?" he asked quietly.
"Three minutes."
Smith did the first thing that occurred to him. He took a letter from his pocket, tore it slowly into small pieces, and let the fragments float away on the breeze. This device appeared to be successful for a few seconds; but when the sc.r.a.ps of paper had disappeared or fallen to the ground the pigmies resumed their stealthy silent advance. Smith had another idea. Whistling the merry air of the "Saucy Arethusa," he took two backward steps towards the aeroplane, seized a half-empty petrol can, and strolled unconcernedly with it to the bank of the stream, which at this point formed a slowly moving pool. As he went he unscrewed the stopper, and on reaching the brink, he poured some of the petrol into the water. Then taking two or three matches from his box, he struck them together, and flung them into the petrol floating on the surface.
The effect of his stratagem was immediate. The spectacle of water apparently on fire was too much for the simple savages. For the first time they broke their silence, and were seen rushing up the wooded slope, uttering shrill cries of alarm. Only then did Smith become aware how numerous they were. The whole forest seemed to be alive with them.
"Done, mister," cried Rodier.
Smith hurried back to the aeroplane, noticing as he approached several small arrows sticking upright in the ground close to it.
"They shot at you when you turned your back," said Rodier. "Shall we fire at them?"
"No; leave them alone. I think they"re scared now. But it"s lucky I thought of setting fire to the petrol, or they would certainly have been upon us, and there"s such a crowd of them that we might have been done for. Set the engine working. The noise will keep them away."
With some difficulty they turned the aeroplane round to face down stream, where there was a fairly level stretch of a few yards for running off. Vaulting on board, they started, and in five or six seconds the aeroplane was humming along a hundred feet above the trees.
CHAPTER XIII
THE RESCUE
Smith had taken no account of the time he had lost, first by the storm, then by the overhauling of the engine; but, little or much, it increased the peril of his father, and lessened his own chance of accomplishing what he had set out to do. When an engine is always running at full speed, time lost can only be made up by reducing the length of stoppages, and Smith felt even this to be almost out of the question. As soon as he was once more afloat, he thought his best plan was to make for the coast again, and follow this without attempting to cross the mountains.
The storm had ceased; the engine was working smoothly, and, steering south-east, Smith in a few minutes found himself again in the neighbourhood of Port Moresby. Again he ran down the coast, but when about half-way between the port and the extreme south-east corner of the island he espied a gap in the mountain chain and sped through it, almost exactly on the ten-degree line. He had to rise to a considerable height, and was for some moments troubled by the ma.s.ses of snow-white c.u.mulose clouds that lay beneath him, cutting off all view of the ground. The vast expanse of cloud lay dazzling white in the sunlight, with peaks and crags such as he imagined Alpine summits must show. But though it appeared to be perfectly still, every now and then he saw small jets of mist shoot upward, like water from a geyser, and at such times the vertical currents affected the elevation of the aeroplane. He soon crossed this cloudy sea, however, and in a few hours reached the north-east coast of New Guinea, and knew that nothing but an island-spangled sea separated him from his destination.
About noon he came in sight of the mountains of Vanguna Island to the east of New Georgia. Ysabel Island lay beyond this, running from north-west to south-east. His intention was to round Cape Prieto, the south-eastern extremity of it, and search the eastern sh.o.r.e northward.
In another hour he saw Russell Island, a green gem in the ocean southward, and beyond this, to the south-east, the peaks of Guadalcanar. Another twenty minutes brought him abreast of Florida Island, and he was heading up the Indispensable Strait, with Thousand Ships Bay and the lofty peaks at the southern end of Ysabel lying on his left hand.
All at once Rodier descried a cloud of smoke on the horizon far up the strait. Lifting his binocular, he shouted excitedly--
"It is a gunboat, mister. She flies the British flag."
"We"ve beaten her!" cried Smith.
He was divided between pleasure at his success, and sorrow that the castaways were as yet unrelieved, for he could not doubt that the gunboat was the same that had been dispatched from Brisbane to their a.s.sistance. Before many minutes had elapsed he had overtaken the vessel. Slowing down and wheeling overhead, he saw that the aeroplane was the object of wondering interest on the crowded deck.
"Ahoy, there! Who are you?" he shouted through his megaphone.
"Gunboat _Frobisher_, Captain Warren," came the reply. "Who are you?"
"Aeroplane without a name, Lieutenant Smith of H.M.S. _Imperturbable_, bound for Ysabel Island to relieve Lieutenant Underhill."
"The d.i.c.kens! That"s my job! Where do you hail from?"
"From London, sir. I"m afraid I"ve beaten you by a neck."
"Great Scott! Is this the Admiralty"s latest?"
"Not official, sir; I"m here in a private capacity. My father"s among the wrecked party. I"m on leave."
"So it seems. When are you due back?"
"On Friday morning."
"I"m sorry for you, then. But, goodness alive! when did you start? The wreck was only reported four days ago."
"Started Friday morning, sir."
"Gammon!"
"Rasher to you, sir."
"You haven"t lost much time, at any rate. What"s your speed?"
"About a hundred and ninety. Whereabouts was the wreck, sir?"
"A hundred miles or so up the coast, according to the men of Underhill"s party with me."
"Then I"ll bid you good-bye for the present. I"ll tell him you"re coming."
"Hope you"ll find him alive."
Waving a good-bye, Smith flew on at full speed. For twenty minutes he did not attempt to follow the indentations of the coast, but set a course parallel with its general trend. Then, however, he steered so that, without actually tracing every curve of the sh.o.r.e, he was able to survey it pretty closely. By dead reckoning and the a.s.sistance of his chart he was able to check from minute to minute his approximate position.