Майн Рид
The Castaways
Chapter Eighteen.
Sick after Supper
It was near upon sundown when the roast fowl was taken from the spit, carved, and distributed among them. The fire over which they had cooked it was close to the trunk of the tree under whose shade they intended to pass the night. It was not the one they had chosen after being driven from the durion, but another, with far-spreading branches and green glossy leaves growing thickly upon them, which promised a better protection from the dews of the night. They needed this, as they had not yet thought of erecting any other roof. The only thing in the shape of shelter they had set up was the tarpaulin, spread awning fashion over four uprights, which held it at the four corners; but this was barely sufficient to furnish the two young people with a sleeping-place.
After removing the roast fowl from the spit, they had not permitted their fire to die out. On the contrary, Murtagh, in whose charge it was, threw on some fresh faggots. They intended keeping it up through the night, not to scare away wild beasts, for, as already said, they had no fear of these; but because the atmosphere toward midnight usually became damp and chilly, and they would need the fire to keep them warm.
It was quite sunset by the time they had finished eating the roast hornbill, and as there is but little twilight under or near the equator, the darkness came down almost instantaneously. By the light of the blazing faggots they picked the bones of the bird, and picked them clean. But they had scarce dropped the drumsticks and other bones out of their fingers, when one and all fell violently sick.
A sensation of vertigo had been growing upon them, which, as soon as the meal was over, became nausea, and shortly after ended in vomiting. It was natural they should feel alarmed. Had only one been ill, they might have ascribed the illness to some other cause; but now, when all five were affected at the same time, and with symptoms exactly similar, they could have no other belief than that it was owing to what they had eaten, and that the flesh of the hornbill had caused their sickness – perhaps poisoned them.
Could this be? Was it possible for the flesh of a bird to be poisonous? Was that of a hornbill so? These questions were quickly asked of one another, but more especially addressed to Saloo. The Malay did not believe it was. He had eaten hornbills before, and more than once; had seen others eat them; but had never known or heard of the dish being followed by symptoms similar to those now affecting and afflicting them.
The bird itself might have eaten something of a poisonous nature, which, although it had not troubled its own stomach, acted as an emetic upon theirs. There was some probability in this conjecture; at all events the sufferers thought so for a time, since there seemed no other way of accounting for the illness which had so suddenly seized upon them.
At first they were not so very greatly alarmed, for they could not realise the idea that they had been absolutely poisoned. A little suffering and it would be all over, when they would take good care not to eat roast hornbill again. No, nor even stewed or broiled; so that now the old hen and her young one were no longer looked upon as so much provision ahead. Both would be thrown away, to form food for the first predatory creature that might chance to light upon them.
As time passed, however, and the sufferers, instead of feeling relieved, only seemed to be growing worse – the vertigo and nausea continuing, while the vomiting was renewed in frequent and violent attacks – they at length became seriously alarmed, believing themselves poisoned to death.
They knew not what to do. They had no medicine to act as an antidote; and if they had been in possession of all the drugs in the pharmacopoeia, they would not have known which to make use of. Had it been the bite of a venomous snake or other reptile, the Malay, acquainted with the usual native remedies, might have found some herbaceous balsam in the forest; though in the darkness there would have been a difficulty about this, since it was now midnight, and there was no moon in the sky – no light to look for anything. They could scarcely see one another, and each knew where his neighbours lay only by hearing their moans and other exclamations of distress.
As the hours dragged on wearily, they became still more and more alarmed. They seriously believed that death was approaching. A terrible contemplation it was, after all they had passed through; the perils of shipwreck, famine, thirst; the danger of being drowned; one of them escaping from a hideous reptile; another from the coils of a serpent; a third from having his skull cracked in by a fallen fruit, and afterwards split open by the beak of an angry bird. Now, after all these hairbreadth perils and escapes, to be poisoned by eating the flesh of this very bird – to die in such simple and apparently causeless fashion; though it may seem almost ridiculous, it was to them not a whit the less appalling. And appalled they were, as time passed, and they felt themselves growing worse instead of better. They were surely poisoned – surely going to die.
Chapter Nineteen.
An uneasy Night
Long with the agonising pain – for the sensations they experienced were exceedingly painful – there was confusion in their thoughts, and wandering in their speech. The feeling was somewhat to that of sea-sickness in its worst form; and they felt that reckless indifference to death so characteristic of the sufferer from this very common, but not the less painful, complaint. Had the sea, seething and surging against the beach so near them, broken beyond its boundaries, and swept over the spot where they lay, not one of them, in all probability, would have stirred hand or foot to remove themselves out of its reach. Drowning – death in any form – would at that moment have seemed preferable to the tortures they were enduring.
They did not lie still. At times one or another would get up and stray from under the tree. But the nausea continued, accompanied by the horrid retching; their heads swam, their steps tottered, and staggering back, they would fling themselves down despairingly, hoping, almost praying, for death to put an end to their agonies. It was likely soon to do so.
During all, Captain Redwood showed that he was thinking less of himself than his children. Willingly would he have lain down and died, could that have secured their surviving him. But it was a fate that threatened all alike. On this account, he was wishing that either he or one of his comrades, Murtagh or Saloo, might outlive the young people long enough to give them the rites of sepulture. He could not bear the thought that the bodies of his two beautiful children were to be left above ground, on the desolate shore, their flesh to be torn from them by the teeth of ravenous beasts or the beaks of predatory birds – their bones to whiten and moulder under the sun and storms of the tropics.
Despite the pain he was himself enduring, he secretly communicated his wishes to Murtagh and the Malay, imploring them to obey what might be almost deemed a dying request.
Parting speeches were from time to time exchanged in the muttered tones of despair. Prayers were said aloud, unitedly, and by all of them silently in their own hearts.
After this, Captain Redwood lay resignedly, his children, one on each side of him, nestling within his arms, their heads pillowed upon his breast close together. They also held one another by the hand, joined in affectionate embrace across the breast of their father. Not many words were spoken between them; only, now and then, some low murmurs, which betokened the terrible pain they felt, and the fortitude both showed in enduring it.
Now and then, too, their father spoke to them. At first he had essayed to cheer them with words of encouragement; but as time passed, these seemed to sound hollow in their ears as well as his own, and he changed them to speeches enjoining resignation, and words that told of the “Better Land”. He reminded them that their mother was there, and they should all soon join her. They would go to her together; and how happy this would be after their toils and sufferings; after so many perils and fatigues, it would be but pleasure to find rest in heaven.
In this way he tried to win their thoughts from dwelling on the terrors of death, every moment growing darker and seeming nearer.
The fire burned down, smouldered, and went out. No one had thought of replenishing it with fuel. Though there were faggots enough collected not far off, the toil of bringing them forward seemed too much for their wasted strength and deadened energies. Fire could be of no service to them now. It had done them no good while ablaze; and since it had gone out, they cared not to renew it. If they were to die, their last moments could scarcely be more bitter in darkness than in light.
Still Captain Redwood wished for light. He wished for it, so that he might once more look upon the faces of his two sweet suffering pets, before the pallor of death should overspread them. He would perhaps have made an effort to rekindle the fire, or requested one of the others to do it; but just then, on turning his eyes to the east, he saw a greyish streak glimmering above the line of the sea-horizon. He knew it was the herald of coming day; and he knew, moreover, that, in the latitude they were in, the day itself would not linger long behind.
“Thank God!” was the exclamation that came from his lips, low muttered, but in fervent emphasis. “Thank God, I shall see them once more! Better their lives should not go out in the darkness.”
As he spoke the words, and as if to gratify him, the streak on the eastern sky seemed rapidly to grow broader and brighter, its colour of pale grey changing to golden yellow; and soon after, the upper limb of the glorious tropical sun showed itself over the smooth surface of the Celebes Sea.
As his cheering rays touched the trees of the forest, then eyes were first turned upon one another, and then in different directions. Those of Captain Redwood rested upon the faces of his children, now truly overspread with the wan pallor of what seemed to be rapidly approaching death.
Murtagh gazed wistfully out upon the ocean, as if wishing himself once more upon it, and no doubt thinking of that green isle far away beyond it; while Saloo’s glance was turned upward – not toward the heavens, but as if he was contemplating some object among the leaves of the tree overhead.
All at once the expression upon his countenance took a change – remarkable as it was sudden. From the look of sullen despair, which but the moment before might have been seen gleaming out of the sunken orbits of his eyes, his glance seemed to change to one of joy, almost with the quickness of the lightning’s flash.
Simultaneous with the change, he sprang up from his reclining position, uttering as he did so an exclamation in the Malayan tongue, which his companions guessed to be some formula of address to the Deity, from its ending with the word “Allah.”
“De gleat God be thank!” he continued, returning to his “pigeon English,” so that the others might understand. “We all be save. Buld no poison. We no die yet. Come away, cappen,” he continued, bending down, and seizing the children by the hands. Then raising both on their feet, he quickly added, “Come all away. Unda de tlee death. Out yonda we findee life. Come away – way.”
Without waiting for the consent either of them or their father, he led – indeed, almost dragged – Helen and Henry from under the shadow of the tree and out toward the open sea-beach.
Though Captain Redwood did not clearly comprehend the object of Saloo’s sudden action, nor Murtagh comprehend it at all, both rose to their feet, and followed with tottering steps.
Not until they had got out upon the open ground, and sat down upon the sand, with the fresh sea-breeze fanning their fevered brows, did Saloo give an explanation of his apparently eccentric behaviour.
He did so by pointing to the tree under which they had passed the night, and pronouncing only the one word – “Upas.”
Chapter Twenty.
The Deadly Upas
“Upas!”
A word sufficient to explain all that had passed. Both Captain Redwood and his ship-carpenter understood its signification; for what man is there who has ever sailed through the islands of the India Archipelago without having heard of the upas? Indeed, who in any part of the world has not either heard or read of this poisonous tree, supposed to carry death to every living thing for a wide distance around it, not even sparing shrubs or plants – things of its own kind – but inflicting blight and destruction wherever its envenomed breath may be wafted on the breeze?
Captain Redwood was a man of too much intelligence, and too well-informed, to have belief in this fabulous tale of the olden time. Still he knew there was enough truth in it to account for all that had occurred – for the vertigo and vomiting, the horrible nausea and utter prostration of strength that had come upon them unconsciously. They had made their camp under one of these baneful trees – the true upas (antiaris toxicaria); they had kindled a fire beneath it, building it close to the trunk – in fact, against it; the smoke had ascended among its leaves; the heat had caused a sudden exudation of the sap; and the envenomed vapour floating about upon the air had freely found its way both into their mouths and nostrils. For hours had this empoisoned atmosphere been their only breath, nearly depriving them of that upon which their lives depended.
If still suffering severely from the effects of having inhaled the noxious vapour, they were now no longer wretched. Their spirits were even restored to a degree of cheerfulness, as is always the case with those who have just escaped from some calamity or danger. They now knew that in due time they would recover their health and strength. The glorious tropical sun that had arisen was shining benignantly in their faces, and brightening everything around, while the breeze, blowing fresh upon them from a serene sapphire-coloured sea, cooled their fevered blood. They felt already reviving. The sensations they experienced were those of one who, late suffering from sea-sickness, pent up in the state-room of a storm-tossed ship, with all its vile odours around him, has been suddenly transferred to terra firma, and laid upon some solid bank, grassy or moss-grown, with tall trees waving above, and the perfume of flowers floating upon the balmy air.
For a long while they sat upon the sands in this pleasant dreamy state, gazing upon the white surf that curled over the coral reefs, gazing upon the blue water beyond, following the flight of large white-winged birds that now and then went plunging down into the sea, to rise up with a fish glistening in their beaks, half unconscious of the scene under their eyes and the strife continuing before them, but conscious, contented, and even joyous at knowing they still lived, and that the time had not yet come for them to die.
They no longer blamed the hornbill for what had happened. The cause was in their own carelessness or imprudence; for Captain Redwood knew the upas-tree, and was well aware of its dangerous properties to those venturing into too close proximity. He had seen it in other islands; for it grows not only in Java, with which its name is more familiarly identified, but in Bali, Celebes, and Borneo. He had seen it elsewhere, and heard it called by different names, according to the different localities, as tayim, hippo, upo, antijar, and upas; all signifying the same thing – the “tree of poison.”
Had he been more careful about the selection of their camping-place, and looked upon its smooth reddish or tan-coloured bark and closely-set leaves of glossy green, he would have recognised and shunned it. He did not do so; for who at such a time could have been thinking of such a catastrophe? Under a tree whose shade seemed so inviting, who would have suspected that danger was lurking, much less that death dwelt among its leaves and branches?
The first had actually arisen, and the last had been very near. But it was now far away, or at least no longer to be dreaded from the poison of the upas. The sickness caused by it would continue for a while, and it might be some time before their strength or energies would be fully restored. But of dying there was no danger, as the poison of the upas does not kill, when only inhaled as a vapour; unless the inhalation be a long time continued. Its sap taken internally, by the chewing of its leaves, bark, or root, is certain death, and speedy death. It is one of the ingredients used by the Bornean Dyaks for tipping their poisoned spears, and the arrows of their sumpitans or blow-guns. They use it in combination with the bina, another deadly poison, extracted from the juice of a parasitical plant found everywhere through the forests of Borneo.
It is singular that the upas-tree should belong to the same natural order, the Artocarpaceae, as the bread-fruit; the tree of death thus being connected with the tree of life. In some of the Indian islands it is called Popon-upas; in Java it is known as the Antijar.
Its leaves are shaped like spear-heads; the fruit is a kind of drupe, clothed in fleshy scales.
The juice, when prepared as a poison, is sometimes mixed with black pepper, and the juice of galanga-root, and of ginger. It is as thick as molasses, and will keep for a long time if sheltered from the action of the air.
The upas does not grow as a gregarious tree, and is nowhere found in numbers. Like the precious treasures of nature – gold, diamonds, and pearls – her poisons, too, happily for man, are sparsely distributed. Even in the climate and soil congenial to it, the antiaris toxicaria is rare; but wherever discovered is sure to be frequently visited, if in a district where there are hunters or warriors wishing to empoison and make more deadly their shafts. A upas-tree in a well-known neighbourhood is usually disfigured by seams and scars, where incisions have been made to extract its envenomed juice.
That there were no such marks upon the one where they had made their camp, was evidence that the neighbourhood was uninhabited. So said Saloo, and the others were but too glad to accept his interpretation of the sign.
Chapter Twenty One.
Starting for the Interior
Reclining on the soft silvery sand, inhaling the fresh morning breeze blowing in from the Celebes Sea, every breath of it seeming to infuse fresh blood into their veins and renewed vigour into their limbs, the castaways felt their health and strength fast returning. Saloo’s prognosis was rapidly proving itself correct. He had said they would soon recover, and they now acknowledged the truth of his prediction.
Their cheerfulness came back along with their returning strength, and with this also their appetites. Their dinner-supper of roast hornbill had done them little good; but although for a time scared by such diet, and determined to eschew it when better could be had, they were now only too glad to resort to it, and it was agreed upon that the old hen, stewed as intended, should supply the material of their breakfast.
A fresh fire was kindled far away from the dangerous upas; the huge shell, with its contents, was hastily snatched from the deadly shade, and, supported by four large pebbles to serve as feet for the queer stew-pan, it was placed over the burning embers, and soon commenced to steam and squeak, spreading around an odorous incense, far pleasanter to the olfactories of the hungry party than either the fresh saline breeze, or the perfume of tropical flowers now and then wafted to them from the recesses of the forest.
While waiting for the flesh of the old hen to get properly and tenderly stewed, they could not resist the temptation of making an assault upon the chick; and it, too, was hurriedly rescued from the tainted larder beneath the upas-tree, spitted upon a bamboo sapling, and broiled like a squab-pigeon over the incandescent brands.
It gave them only a small morsel each, serving as a sort of prelude to the more substantial breakfast soon to follow, and for which they could now wait with greater composure.
In due time Saloo, who was wonderfully skilled in the tactics of the forest cuisine, pronounced the stew sufficiently done; when the stew-pan was lifted from the fire, and set in the soft sand for its contents to cool.
Soon gathering around it, each was helped to a share: one to a wing with liver or gizzard, another to a thigh-joint with a bit of the breast, a third to the stripped breast-bone, or the back one, with its thin covering of flesh, a fourth to a variety of stray giblets.
There was still a savoury sauce remaining in the pan, due to the herb condiments which Saloo had collected. This was served out in some tin pannikins, which the castaway crew had found time to fling into the boat before parting from the sinking ship. It gave them a soup, which, if they could only have had biscuits or bread with it, would have been quite as good as coffee for their breakfast.
As soon as this was eaten, they took steps to change their place of encampment. Twice unfortunate in the selection of a site, they were now more particular, and carefully scrutinised the next tree under whose shadow they intended to take up their abode. A spreading fig not far off invited them to repose beneath its umbrageous foliage; and removing their camp paraphernalia from the poison-breathing; upas, they once more erected the tarpaulin, and recommenced housekeeping under the protecting shelter of a tree celebrated in the Hindu mythology as the “sacred banyan.”
“It was a goodly sight to see
That venerable tree
For o’er the lawn, irregularly spread.
Fifty straight columns propt its lofty head;
And many a long depending shoot,
Seeking to strike its root,
Straight like a plummet grew towards the ground.
Some on the lower boughs which crost their way,
Fixing their bearded fibres, round and round,
With many a ring and wild contortion wound;
Some to the passing wind at times, with sway
Of gentle motion swung;
Others of younger growth, unmoved, were hung
Like stone-drops from a cavern’s fretted height.”
The banyan often measures thirty feet in girth; the one selected by Captain Redwood was probably not less than twenty-five feet. Its peculiarity is that it throws out roots from all its branches, so that as fast as each branch, in growing downwards, touches the ground, it takes root, and in due time serves as a substantial prop to the horizontal bough, which, without some such support, would give way beneath its own weight.
They intended it for only a temporary dwelling-place, until their strength should be sufficiently established to enable them to start on their contemplated overland journey, with a prospect of being able to continue it to its end.
It seemed, at length, as if fortune, hitherto so adverse, had turned a smiling face toward them; and they were not much longer to be detained upon that wild and dangerous shore. For the same day on which they removed from the upas to the fig-tree, the latter furnished them with an article of food in sufficient quantity to stock their larder for nearly a week, and of a quality superior in strengthening powers to either roast or stewed hornbill, and quite equal to the eggs of the mound-making birds.
It was not the fruit of the fig that had done this; but an animal they had discovered crawling along one of its branches. It was a reptile of that most hideous and horrid shape, the saurian; and only the hungriest man could ever have looked upon, with thoughts of eating it. But Saloo felt no repugnance of this kind; he knew that the huge lizard creeping along the limb of the banyan-tree, over five feet long, and nearly as thick as the body of a man, would afford flesh not only eatable, but such as would have been craved for by Apicius, had the Roman epicure ever journeyed through the islands of the Malayan Archipelago, and found an opportunity of making trial of it.
What they saw slowly traversing the branch above them was one of those huge lizards of the genus Hydrosaurus, of which there are several species in Indian climes – like the iguanas of America – harmless creatures, despite their horrid appearance, and often furnishing to the hunter or forester a meal of chops and steaks both tender and delicious.
With this knowledge of what it would afford them, Saloo had no difficulty in persuading Captain Redwood to send a bullet through the skull of the hydrosaurus, and it soon lay lifeless upon the ground.
The lizard was nigh six feet from snout to tail; and Saloo, assisted by Murtagh, soon slipped a piece of his vegetable rope around its jaws, and slung it up to a horizontal branch for the purpose of skinning it. Thus suspended, with limbs and arms sticking out, it bore a very disagreeable resemblance to a human being just hanged. Saloo did not care anything about this, but at once commenced peeling off its skin; and then he cut the body into quarters, and subdivided them into “collops,” which were soon sputtering in the blaze of a bright fire. As the Malay had promised, these proved tender, tasting like young pork steaks, with a slight flavour of chicken, and just a soupçon of frog. Delicate as they were, however, after three days’ dieting upon them all felt stronger – almost strong enough, indeed, to commence their grand journey.
Just then another, and still more strengthening, kind of food was added to their larder. It was obtained by a mere accident, in the form of a huge wild boar of the Bornean species, which, scouring the forest in search of fruits or roots, had strayed close to their camp under the fig-tree. He came too close for his own safety; a bullet from Captain Redwood’s rifle having put an abrupt stop to his “rootings.”
Butchered in proper scientific fashion, he not only afforded them food for the time in the shape of pork chops, roast ribs, and the like; but gave them a couple of hams, which, half-cooked and cured by smoking, could be carried as a sure supply upon the journey.
And so provisioned, they at length determined on commencing it, taking with them such articles of the wreck-salvage as could be conveniently transferred, and might prove beneficial. Bidding adieu to the pinnace, the dear old craft which had so safely carried them through the dangers of the deep, they embarked on a voyage of a very different kind, in the courses of which they were far less skilled, and of whose tracks and perils they were even more apprehensive. But they had no other alternative. To remain on the eastern coast of Borneo would be to stay there for ever. They could not entertain the slightest hope of any ship appearing off shore to rescue them. A vessel so showing itself would be, in all probability, a prau filled with bloodthirsty pirates, who would either kill or make captives of them, and afterwards sell them into slavery: and a slavery from which no civilised power could redeem them, as no civilised man might ever see them in their chains.
It was from knowing this terrible truth that Captain Redwood had resolved upon crossing the great island overland at that part where he supposed it to be narrowest, – the neck lying between its eastern coast and the old Malayan town of Bruni on the west, adjacent to the islet of Labuan, where he knew an English settlement was situated.
In pursuance of this determination, he struck camp, and moved forward into a forest of unknown paths and mysterious perils.
