I was obliged to confess that there was not, and yet I felt so positive of my position that I repeated my assertion with some warmth.
“What do you say, Doctor?” asked Maurice. “Shall we venture?”
“Faith, my dear boy, we might as well try one road as the other,” he replied lightly, “but with all due deference to Brother Wylde, I doubt if he knows any more about it than we do.”
“Very well; I am quite willing to yield my opinion,” said I. But they would not have it so. Since I had an opinion and they had none, it was decided to take the right hand path.
As we hurried on the jungle seemed to grow denser, yet the path remained clearly defined.
“I am becoming more and more convinced that we are going wrong,” said the Doctor, at length. “Look at that fan palm—I am certain we did not pass it. A beautiful specimen. I should have been sure to notice it particularly, but as it is I am ready to swear I never saw it before.”
“Shall we retrace our steps then?” I asked, for I had become less confident myself.
“Suppose we push on a little further,” said Maurice. “It seems to me I can distinguish an opening on ahead.”
“Which would go to prove that we are astray,” added the Doctor, “for we passed no clearing of any sort coming down.”
“True; but it may be a native village where we could find a guide,” said I.
“Hark!” cried Maurice. “What was that? An elephant, surely!”
For an instant a shrill trumpeting resounded through the forest and then all grew still.
“Come on!” shouted Maurice, unslinging his rifle. “It has always been my ambition to bag an elephant and the chance has come at last!”
We pushed on, advancing with as much caution as possible. Again the trumpeting was heard, and still again.
“An elephant it is beyond all question,” said Philpot, “but I'm afraid you can’t kill it, after all, Maurice.”
“Why not, I’d like to know! Do you mean to intimate that my shooting is so poor that I couldn’t hit a beast as big as the side of a house? ”
“Not at all,” laughed the Doctor. “I only mean to intimate that your elephant is a tame one. Look there!”
We had rounded a turn in the path now and saw directly ahead a large elephant, standing beneath a cocoa palm which formed one of a grove of similar trees surrounding a little collection of grass-thatched huts.
“A village!” I exclaimed. “This settles it. We are on the wrong road.”
“And it puts a finish to De Veber’s elephant hunt!” laughed the Doctor. “Why that beast is half blind and looks as though he might be crowding a hundred. But where are all the people?”
There was no one to be seen; at least no one but the aged elephant, who stood there leisurely waving his trunk back and forth and peering at us out of his little eyes in a fashion which disproved the Doctor’s theory of blindness. There were at least a dozen of the huts; the doors all stood wide open, with fowls running in and out, and stretched directly across the threshold of one lay an old sow with her litter of pigs who blinked at us lazily, and then, apparently assured that we were harmless, closed her eyes with a satisfied grunt.
“Good!” cried the Doctor. “This is precisely what we want. We shall be sure to find a guide here who will take us over to Angkor for a few ticals. Hello there! Hello!”
There was no direct answer, but at the same instant the echoes of the forest were awakened by a piercing scream, which seemed to proceed from behind the huts among the palms.
“By Jove!” exclaimed the Doctor. “A female in distress? It is, as I live! Shades of my ancestors! This won’t do! No true born Briton can turn away from that appeal.”
Now the cry came again. It was surely that of a woman in agony, just as the Doctor said.
We hurried behind the huts, coming upon a group of half-naked natives, who were clustering about two giant cocoa palms in the middle of a little clearing.
“Thunder and Mars! What barbarity!” burst from the Doctor, as we looked ahead.
Between the palms was a young girl, her only dress the panoung, or Siamese breech cloth, worn by men, which dropped from the waist below the knees. She was bound by the wrists and ankles to the two trees writhing under the blows of a strip of rawhide wielded by a wicked looking fellow behind her. Each time it descended a shout of satisfaction went up from those who crowded around.
“I’ll soon put a stop to this!” shouted the Doctor. “Nothing of the sort can be allowed with your uncle about.”
Never had I respected the man as I did at that moment when he sprang away from us and dashed fearlessly among the group.
Not that Maurice and I were backward. Cocking our rifles we followed the Doctor, shouting as we went.
But there was nothing to fear. The instant the crowd saw us they fell back, the half-naked cowards scampering off in every direction, not, however, before the Doctor had caught the flogger and dashed him to the earth. The fellow made no resistence, but went crawling off on his hands and knees like some animal, disappearing among the palms.
Meanwhile Maurice had whipped out his knife and cut the cords which bound the girl, who seemed to have fallen into a state of unconsciousness. I would have helped him had I not been prevented by my legs being suddenly seized by an aged, white haired man, who crouched upon the ground weeping and muttering. With some little difficulty I managed to free myself, and extending a hand raised him to his feet.
“What does all this mean?” I exclaimed. “Look, Doctor! These people are white!”
I had used the word when perhaps I should not, for certainly the girl was not white, her skin having rather the yellowish tinge of the Spaniard or Portuguese. And yet she was beautiful. As my eyes turned toward her I saw it and wondered that I had not seen it at the first. Never was there a form of more correct proportions! Never such hair as those long black tresses, hanging loosely in a thick mass over her shoulders; as for the face every feature was perfection itself, a study for a sculptor; involuntarily my mind pictured the Venus di Milo, and then——
Why then, as my eyes rested upon her while she stood supported by Maurice, a most singular thing happened to me.
Suddenly all my surroundings seemed blotted out and I could see only the girl, and the sight seemed to move my heart as it had never been moved before.
What did it mean?
Was it a case of love?
Love! Had I ever known it? Never, certainly, as I knew it then!
As I gazed upon that still, tear-stained face, a strange tingling shot through me down to my very toes, and I was seized with an instant of jealousy of Maurice; a longing to tear her from him and fly with her to the forest, to bury myself in its most remote recesses where I could live for her alone!
Was I mad? Was this the man who had cursed the fair sex with that bitterness which can be had only by sad experience? What was the meaning of this sudden freak?
Certainly I was not master of my own actions when I leaped forward and seizing her bleeding form pressed it to my heart!
Yes, in that moment I must have been mad; though in the days that followed, when memory recalled my ridiculous action, I came to believe that the man Mirrikh was in a measure responsible; that the mere touch of his hand had brought to life some force within me the nature of which I do not pretend to explain. But this is anticipating the outcome of our strange meeting at Panompin. I must return.
The instant I found my arms