"Without being certain, I think it is because of a duel he fought in Sumatra," said the Smuggler, mysteriously.
"A duel--with whom?"
"I don"t know--I am not at all certain on the subject. But do you know the ruins of Tchandi?"
"Yes."
"The general expects you there; that is what he ordered me to tell you."
"So you came with him from Sumatra?"
"I was pilot of the little smuggling coaster, that landed him in the night on a lonely beach. He knew that you went every day to the mole, to wait for him; I was almost sure that I should meet you. He gave me details about the letter you received from him as a proof that he had sent me. If he could have found the means of writing, he would have written."
"But he did not tell you why he was obliged to hide himself?"
"He told me nothing. Certain words made me suspect what I told you--a duel."
Knowing the mettle of General Simon, Djalma thought the suspicions of the Smuggler not unfounded. After a moment"s silence he said to him: "Can you undertake to lead home my horse? My dwelling is without the town--there, in the midst of those trees--by the side of the new mosque.
In ascending the mountain of Tchandi, my horse would be in my way; I shall go much faster on foot."
"I know where you live; General Simon told me. I should have gone there if I had not met you. Give me your horse."
Djalma sprang lightly to the ground, threw the bridle to Mahal, unrolled one end of his sash, took out a silk purse, and gave it to the Smuggler, saying: "You have been faithful and obedient. Here!--it is a trifle--but I have no more."
"Kadja-sing was rightly called the "Father of the Generous,"" said the Smuggler, bowing with respect and grat.i.tude. He took the road to Batavia, leading Djalma"s horse. The young Indian, on the contrary, plunged into the coppice, and, walking with great strides, he directed his course towards the mountain, on which were the ruins of Tchandi, where he could not arrive before night.
CHAPTER XX. M. JOSHUA VAN DAEL.
M. Joshua Van Dael a Dutch merchant, and correspondent of M. Rodin, was born at Batavia, the capital of the island of Java; his parents had sent him to be educated at Pondicherry, in a celebrated religious house, long established in that place, and belonging to the "Society of Jesus."
It was there that he was initiated into the order as "professor of the three vows," or lay member, commonly called "temporal coadjutor."
Joshua was a man of probity that pa.s.sed for stainless; of strict accuracy in business, cold, careful, reserved, and remarkably skillful and sagacious; his financial operations were almost always successful, for a protecting power gave him ever in time, knowledge of events which might advantageously influence his commercial transactions. The religious house of Pondicherry was interested in his affairs, having charged him with the exportation and exchange of the produce of its large possessions in this colony.
Speaking little, hearing much, never disputing, polite in the extreme--giving seldom, but with choice and purpose--Joshua, without inspiring sympathy, commanded generally that cold respect, which is always paid to the rigid moralist; for instead of yielding to the influence of lax and dissolute colonial manners, he appeared to live with great regularity, and his exterior had something of austerity about it, which tended to overawe.
The following scene took place at Batavia, while Djalma was on his way to the ruins of Tchandi in the hope of meeting General Simon.
M. Joshua had just retired into his cabinet, in which were many shelves filled with paper boxes, and huge ledgers and cash boxes lying open upon desks. The only window of this apartment, which was on the ground floor, looked out upon a narrow empty court, and was protected externally by strong iron bars; instead of gla.s.s, it was fitted with a Venetian blind, because of the extreme heat of the climate.
M. Joshua, having placed upon his desk a taper in a gla.s.s globe, looked at the clock. "Half-past nine," said he. "Mahal ought soon to be here."
Saying this, he went out, pa.s.sing through an antechamber, opened a second thick door, studded with nail-heads, in the Dutch fashion, cautiously entered the court (so as not to be heard by the people in the house), and drew back the secret bolt of a gate six feet high, formidably garnished with iron spikes. Leaving this gate unfastened, he regained his cabinet, after he had successively and carefully closed the two other doors behind him.
M. Joshua next seated himself at his desk, and took from a drawer a long letter, or rather statement, commenced some time before, and continued day by day. It is superfluous to observe, that the letter already mentioned, as addressed to M. Rodin, was anterior to the liberation of Djalma and his arrival at Batavia.
The present statement was also addressed to M. Rodin, and Van Dael thus went on with it:
"Fearing the return of General Simon, of which I had been informed by intercepting his letters--I have already told you, that I had succeeded in being employed by him as his agent here; having then read his letters, and sent them on as if untouched to Djalma, I felt myself obliged, from the pressure of the circ.u.mstances, to have recourse to extreme measures--taking care always to preserve appearances, and rendering at the same time a signal service to humanity, which last reason chiefly decided me.
"A new danger imperiously commanded these measures. The steamship "Ruyter" came in yesterday, and sails tomorrow in the course of the day.
She is to make the voyage to Europe via the Arabian Gulf; her pa.s.sengers will disembark at Suez, cross the Isthmus, and go on board another vessel at Alexandria, which will bring them to France. This voyage, as rapid as it is direct, will not take more than seven or eight weeks. We are now at the end of October; Prince Djalma might then be in France by the commencement of the month of January; and according to your instructions, of which I know not the motive, but which I execute with zeal and submission, his departure must be prevented at all hazards, because, you tell me, some of the gravest interests of the Society would be compromised, by the arrival of this young Indian in Paris before the 13th of February. Now, if I succeed, as I hope, in making him miss this opportunity of the "Ruyter" it will be materially impossible for him to arrive in France before the month of April; for the "Ruyter" is the only vessel which makes the direct pa.s.sage, the others taking at least four or five months to reach Europe.
"Before telling you the means which I have thought right to employ, to detain Prince Djalma--of the success of which means I am yet uncertain--it is well that you should be acquainted with the following facts.
"They have just discovered, in British India, a community whose members call themselves "Brothers of the Good Work," or "Phansegars," which signifies simply "Thugs" or "Stranglers;" these murderers do not shed blood, but strangle their victims, less for the purpose of robbing them, than in obedience to a homicidal vocation, and to the laws of an infernal divinity named by them "Bowanee."
"I cannot better give you an idea of this horrible sect, than by transcribing here some lines from the introduction of a report by Colonel Sleeman, who has hunted out this dark a.s.sociation with indefatigable zeal. The report in question was published about two months ago. Here is the extract; it is the colonel who speaks:
""From 1822 to 1824, when I was charged with the magistracy and civil administration of the district of Nersingpore, not a murder, not the least robbery was committed by an ordinary criminal, without my being immediately informed of it; but if any one had come and told me at this period, that a band of hereditary a.s.sa.s.sins by profession lived in the village of Kundelie, within about four hundred yards of my court of justice--that the beautiful groves of the village of Mundesoor, within a day"s march of my residence, formed one of the most frightful marts of a.s.sa.s.sination in all India--that numerous bands of "Brothers of the Good Work," coming from Hindostan and the Deccan, met annually beneath these shades, as at a solemn festival, to exercise their dreadful vocation upon all the roads which cross each other in this locality--I should have taken such a person for a madman, or one who had been imposed upon by idle tales. And yet nothing could be truer; hundreds of travellers had been buried every year in the groves of Mundesoor; a whole tribe of a.s.sa.s.sins lived close to my door, at the very time I was supreme magistrate of the province, and extended their devastations to the cities of Poonah and Hyderabad. I shall never forget, when, to convince me of the fact, one of the chiefs of the Stranglers, who had turned informer against them, caused thirteen bodies to be dug up from the ground beneath my tent, and offered to produce any number from the soil in the immediate vicinity."(5)
"These few words of Colonel Sleeman will give some idea of this dread society, which has its laws, duties, customs, opposed to all other laws, human and divine. Devoted to each other, even to heroism, blindly obedient to their chiefs, who profess themselves the immediate representatives of their dark divinity, regarding as enemies all who do not belong to them, gaining recruits everywhere by a frightful system of proselytising--these apostles of a religion of murder go preaching their abominable doctrines in the shade, and spreading their immense net over the whole of India.
"Three of their princ.i.p.al chiefs, and one of their adepts, flying from the determined pursuit of the English governor-general, having succeeded in making their escape, had arrived at the Straits of Malacca, at no great distance from our island; a smuggler, who is also something of a pirate, attached to their a.s.sociation, and by name Mahal, took them on board his coasting vessel, and brought them hither, where they think themselves for some time in safety--as, following the advice of the smuggler, they lie concealed in a thick forest, in which are many ruined temples and numerous subterranean retreats.
"Amongst these chiefs, all three remarkably intelligent, there is one in particular, named Faringhea, whose extraordinary energy and eminent qualities make him every way redoubtable. He is of the mixed race, half white and Hindoo, has long inhabited towns in which are European factories and speaks English and French very well. The other two chiefs are a Negro and a Hindoo; the adept is a Malay.
"The smuggler, Mahal, considering that he could obtain a large reward by giving up these three chiefs and their adept, came to me, knowing, as all the world knows, my intimate relations with a person who has great influence with our governor. Two days ago, he offered me, on certain conditions, to deliver up the Negro, the half-caste, the Hindoo, and the Malay. These conditions are--a considerable sum of money, and a free pa.s.sage on board a vessel sailing for Europe or America, in order to escape the implacable vengeance of the Thugs.
"I joyfully seized the occasion to hand over three such murderers to human justice, and I promised Mahal to arrange matters for him with the governor, but also on certain conditions, innocent in themselves, and which concerned Djalma. Should my project succeed, I will explain myself more at length; I shall soon know the result, for I expect Mahal every minute.
"But before I close these despatches, which are to go tomorrow by the "Ruyter"--in which vessel I have also engaged a pa.s.sage for Mahal the Smuggler, in the event of the success of my plans--I must include in parentheses a subject of some importance.
"In my last letter, in which I announced to you the death of Djalma"s father, and his own imprisonment by the English, I asked for some information as to the solvency of Baron Tripeaud, banker and manufacturer at Paris, who has also an agency at Calcutta. This information will now be useless, if what I have just learned should, unfortunately, turn out to be correct, and it will be for you to act according to circ.u.mstances.
"This house at Calcutta owes considerable sums both to me and our colleague at Pondicherry, and it is said that M. Tripeaud has involved himself to a dangerous extent in attempting to ruin, by opposition, a very flourishing establishment, founded some time ago by M. Francois Hardy, an eminent manufacturer. I am a.s.sured that M. Tripeaud has already sunk and lost a large capital in this enterprise: he has no doubt done a great deal of harm to M. Francois Hardy; but he has also, they say, seriously compromised his own fortune--and, were he to fail, the effects of his disaster would be very fatal to us, seeing that he owes a large sum of money to me and to us.
"In this state of things it would be very desirable if, by the employment of the powerful means of every kind at our disposal, we could completely discredit and break down the house of M. Francois Hardy, already shaken by M. Tripeaud"s violent opposition. In that case, the latter would soon regain all he has lost; the ruin of his rival would insure his prosperity, and our demands would be securely covered.
"Doubtless, it is painful, it is sad, to be obliged to have recourse to these extreme measures, only to get back our own; but, in these days, are we not surely justified in sometimes using the arms that are incessantly turned against us? If we are reduced to such steps by the injustice and wickedness of men, we may console ourselves with the reflection that we only seek to preserve our worldly possessions, in order to devote them to the greater glory of G.o.d; whilst, in the hands of our enemies, those very goods are the dangerous instruments of perdition and scandal.
"After all it is merely a humble proposition that I submit to you. Were it in my power to take an active part in the matter, I should do nothing of myself. My will is not my own. It belongs, with all I possess, to those whom I have sworn absolute obedience."
Here a slight noise interrupted M. Joshua, and drew his attention from his work. He rose abruptly, and went straight to the window. Three gentle taps were given on the outside of one of the slats of the blind.
"Is it you, Mahal?" asked M. Joshua, in a low voice.
"It is I," was answered from without, also in a low tone.
"And the Malay?"
"He has succeeded."
"Really!" cried M. Joshua, with an expression of great satisfaction; "are you sure of it?"
"Quite sure: there is no devil more clever and intrepid."