Uncharted Seas (39 page)

His survey had occupied no more than a minute. They moved on more swiftly now, round the corner of the building to that which joined it with the one on the far side of the courtyard. Here again some doors were shut and others only veiled by curtains.

As they approached the nearest a scream rang out from inside the building. Basil leapt forward impulsively and, stopping, raised the curtain an inch with his finger so that he could peer beneath it. The sight he saw filled him with a fierce desire to draw his pistol and rush inside. Two more huge, full-blooded Negresses stood one on either side of a fair-skinned young girl of about seventeen. They were holding her down while a third, whose face was contorted with sadistic hate, wielded a cat-o’-nine-tails above her head.

The girl was kicking out with her bare legs but her body was held by the two great black women, as though in a vice, and a second later the nine lashes descended through the air on to her back with a sickening whistle. She let out another scream; Basil swayed forward, but Luvia, who was peering through a gap at the side of the curtain, wrenched him back. Their own women needed all the help they had to give and must come first; pushing Basil slightly he urged him on to the next doorway.

A third wail of agony came quavering through the night. Silence fell again, broken only by the wild cries of the dancing savages in the near distance, the beat of the tom-toms and the constant mutter that came from inside the evil Marriage House.

They passed two more closed doorways but the third was again covered only by a piece of tattered stuff. Basil caught the first glimpse of the interior and instantly gripped Luvia’s arm. Juhani bent and peered in, rapidly glimpsing what Basil had seen before him. Almost opposite to them Unity and Synolda were lying on one of the filthy mattresses with their backs propped against the further wall. Their faces were grimed and tear-stained. Great red semi-circles showed under the eyes of both girls from constant weeping, but they were dry-eyed now, having
perhaps no more tears to shed. They were huddled together tightly clasped in each other’s arms. An awful look of despair and terror was on both their faces.

Juhani wondered why they did not endeavour to escape through the open doorway, but it occurred to him that they had probably attempted to do so and been hauled back. The reason they were not making any attempt at the moment was plain to him a second after as, shifting his position a little, he saw another of the huge Negresses squatting on her haunches only a couple of yards away with a cat-o’-nine-tails laid across her lap. Behind the Negress stood a long-limbed, coffee-coloured child who was busily engaged in picking vermin out of the hideous old woman’s tight, black curls.

Stepping softly back Juhani gave Basil another chance to look and pointed with his finger in the direction of the huge black woman. Basil gave her one glance before riveting his eyes on Unity. She moved a little at that second and he saw that the right sleeve of her dress had been completely ripped away; on her bare arm there showed three angry, red weals. The sight inflamed him to the point of madness; drawing his cutlass he wrenched aside the curtain and leapt into the room.

Red rage distorting his features, Basil swung his blade high and in one stroke almost severed the hideous head of the Negress from her obese body. Juhani, bounding after him, dashed straight over to the girls.

Next second pandemonium was loose in the long, low barrack. The halfe-caste women sprang up from their palliasses gibbering excitedly. A big Negress, who had been sitting about fifty feet down the room, gave an angry bellow and came lumbering heavily towards them, but the concubines saw their chance to revenge themselves upon their tormentors in this unprecedented invasion of their quarters. One of them tripped the Negress and the others fell upon her like a pack of wolves, tearing the flesh from her face and body in gory shreds.

In the opposite direction further sounds of strife broke out. The two wardresses who had been thrashing the young girl advanced side by side, laying about them lustily with their nine-tailed whips at the crowd of slatternly women who tried to bar their progress. A strapping young girl threw an earthen pot which caught one of the Negresses in the face and she went down with a howl of pain. Basil saw no more of the affray. He had snatched Unity up in his arms and half-lugged, half-carried her out of the
vile building. Juhani was behind him with Synolda flung over his shoulder.

‘You all right?’ Basil gasped as he drew the clean wholesome air of the dark night thankfully into his lungs.

‘Yes,’ breathed Unity. ‘Oh, Basil! bless you!’

‘Can you run?’ he cried, hustling her along by the arm.

‘Yes, yes,’ she shouted, breaking from him and tearing towards the distant palisade as though all the devils in hell were after her.

‘Put me down, put me down,’ Synolda’s voice came from just behind them; but Juhani took no notice and raced on, his great strength being more than equal to the burden.

Suddenly it came to him that the night was changed. What was it? What had happened? A second later the truth flashed on him. For nearly three hours now the monotonous tattoo of the war-drums had been beating in their ears. They had ceased; so, too, had the war-cries of the natives.

The same thought penetrated Basil’s mind just as they reached the palisade. There was a chance that the savages would rest for a while after their exertions, or pause to eat and drink, but it was equally likely that in a few moments they would come streaming through the gates of the compound into the courtyard.

Luvia came bounding up and, dropping Synolda on her feet, bent down, his hands planted on his knees.

‘Up you go,’ he panted. ‘Quick, for God’s sake!’

Basil scrambled on to his back. A second swift movement brought him astride the palisade between two of the great spikes. Synolda had followed him on to Juhani’s wide shoulders. Basil seized her hands and drew her up beside him. Lifting her right clear of the spike in front of him he dropped her down on the other side.

With feverish haste he stooped for Unity. She gave a spring and landed in his arms; her face on a level with his own. He pressed one fierce, swift kiss on her mouth and, tilting her over, let her drop beside Synolda.

The girls had hardly picked themselves up when their men thudded down almost on to them. Basil realised only then that in the excitement they had lost their sense of direction and, instead of heading for the western side of the compound, they had come out to its south. The error had brought them a good two hundred yards nearer to De Brissac but, on the other hand, they were no more than a hundred yards from the nearest native
hutments and in plain sight of any of the savages round the fire who chanced to glance in their direction.

Up on his hill of rock, at the foot of the landslide, De Brissac was still peering anxiously through his night-glasses. In dismay he had witnessed the war-dance come to an end with a final mock charge right up to the very faces of the onlookers, and heard the last wild cry that heralded an almost complete silence. To his relief the sweating dancers sank down on the ground and young Negresses moved out from among the crowd bringing them earthenware pitchers from which they drank. There seemed a chance that the warriors’ visit to the Marriage House still might be postponed a little longer.

In the new silence that had fallen over the great gathering fresh sounds now became perceptible to him. A single scream echoed from the Marriage House and then the shrill falsetto of many women’s upraised voices. At any moment he feared the big Negro under the canopy might send somebody to investigate the trouble but none of the crowd in the clearing appeared to take any notice. Probably they were used to quarrelling among their concubines.

He focused his glasses on the compound, wondering if Basil and Juhani had managed to get inside or if the excitement there was caused by some ordinary upset. It was too dark for him to see anything but the faint glimmer from some of the curtained doorways, and in the valley beyond, to the west, all was darkness and silence.

For two minutes he peered through his night-glasses; then he fancied that he could make out a vague movement down there by the south side of the stockade, which was nearest to him. A moment later he was certain of it and his heart bounded joyfully. Four figures bunched together were moving cautiously up towards the cliff. It could only be Basil and Juhani, with the two girls; but why in the name of thunder, he wondered, had they taken the risk of passing so horribly near the great gathering of Negroes? As he watched he could see the pale blur of the girls’ light-coloured dresses even at that distance.

Suddenly a shout went up from one of the blacks on the edge of the crowd. The whole body of natives seemed to turn as one. The white women and their rescuers had been spotted. Instantly the warriors were upon their feet shrieking madly. The tightly packed mass broke out of its circle; those farthest away, streaming across the open space, silhouetted plainly against the blazing
fire while those nearest the compound rushed forward to head off the little party that was coming up the hill.

De Brissac’s machine-gun was aimed and sighted. At the same instant that Juhani and Basil fired their pistols into the oncoming crowd De Brissac pressed down the lever and a stream of lead streaked from his gun. The night became hideous with its clatter and the screams of the wounded as the first burst took its victims among the witch-doctors and elders who surrounded the big Negro chief.

Shrieks, yells and curses came up from the valley and echoed back from the cliff-face. Utter confusion reigned in the lighted circle. A score of dead and dying lay writhing upon the ground. The chief himself had been hit in the groin and was howling frantically with the pain of his wound.

The unexpected attack momentarily halted the natives nearest to the little party of whites. Taking advantage of it, the four of them began to run, but after a moment, the nearest savages charged towards them again.

De Brissac swivelled his machine-gun and fired another burst, doing deadly execution among the Negroes who were nearest to his friends, but hordes of them seemed to be sweeping up the hillside from every direction. He kept the lever of the gun down and traversed it swiftly from side to side. The blacks were so numerous and crowded together that practically every bullet found a mark; the night became a horrid din of wailing, flesh-torn humans.

Juhani was half-way up the hill, dragging Synolda by the arm; Basil and Unity were running level, only a few yards behind them. A group of burly warriors was less than a dozen yards away, racing to cut them off. One flung a spear that sailed within two inches of Synolda’s shoulder; a flight of spears followed and Basil was pierced by one in the fleshy part of his thigh. He wrenched it out and, whipping round, pistolled the man who had thrown it.

Luvia shot down two more of the nearest Negroes, but the others would have overwhelmed them had not De Brissac concentrated his fire on their aggressors. Mown down by the blast of lead the blacks pitched and tumbled as they were hit, toppling backwards down the hillside.

The four whites raced on. Another moment brought them to the foot of the rocks, Juhani took a flying leap and landed half on the ledge beside De Brissac. Wriggling round he stretched out
his long arms and, grabbing each of the girls by a hand, hauled them up beside him. Gasping and cursing, Basil stumbled up the broken, jagged slope and flinging himself down beside De Brissac snatched up a rifle. Luvia seized another and, as fresh hordes of savages charged yelling up the hill, the three white men commenced the grim fight for their lives and those of the girls they had rescued.

Bright moonlight lit the prospect of the whole low valley. From the natural fort, formed by the great jagged rocks at the base of the landslide, its defenders could see the dense mass of native hutments away in the dip to their right front; before them, six hundred yards away, the great bonfire still burned in the clearing, its light a little subdued by the cold silver of the moonbeams. To its left the Marriage House compound was now full of screaming, running figures.

In a great semi-circle, from cliff-face to cliff-face on either side of them, countless dark forms were racing up the gentle rise. It seemed utterly impossible that the whites could withstand such numbers and there was no possibility of retreat. Behind them, at an angle of forty-five degrees, there rose a fifty-foot gradient of loose earth and shale which had come down from the mountain mass with the great rocks amongst which they crouched. Above it loomed a black cavity. The moonlit landscape and the towering cliff behind them had no cloud, only degrees of shade and darkness, with here and there a silvery edge of jutting rock.

De Brissac had fitted a new belt of ammunition to his machine-gun. As the howling crowd of natives surged up the slope he pressed down its lever. The gun spat flame like an acetylene blowlamp and the staccato rat-tat-tat of its automatic explosions drowned the dull trampling of the advancing savages on the matted earth.

Standing out from the cliff the natural fort formed a semi-circle and could be attacked on its sides as well as its front. Luvia was crouched between two large boulders with Synolda beside him to De Brissac’s right while Basil lay prone upon the flat slab of rock, with Unity to the Frenchman’s left. The two girls had hardly recovered from their desperate effort to escape being cut
off but they did their best to help their men by loading the three spare Winchesters and placing ammunition ready to hand for the machine-gun.

Traversing the gun slowly from side to side De Brissac took a terrible toll of the black attackers, mowing them down by the score before they were near enough to throw their spears, but along each cliff-face the Negroes were able to advance without exposing themselves to the decimating fire. Basil and Luvia found themselves faced by a mob of warriors who came pounding up towards them. Both the white men used their rifles until the magazines were exhausted then snatched the ready-loaded spares from the girls.