The Curious Quests of Brigadier Ffellowes (18 page)

             
"As if this were not bad enough, Burung, as well as some of the other natives and Verner too, were constantly stooping over patches of mud, in order to see what appeared to be quite ordinary traces of game. Once, late in the afternoon, they called my father over and showed him, in
high glee, some daub or other which seemed important to them.

             
" 'Look here, Captain,' said Verner. 'This can hardly fail to interest an old
shikari
, such as yourself!'

             
"My father looked and saw some spoor or other of an animal large enough to be sure, in the bank mud of one of the many small estuaries through which they had just stumbled. The trace had four clawed footprints and was otherwise without meaning. It was indeed wet, that is, recent, with the water oozing in around the rim of the track, but
beyond being the trace of some no doubt harmless creature, probably distorted by expansion, it appeared to have no significance whatever.

             
"My father's attitude seemed to annoy Verner a great deal, and without any further argument the man signaled to the others that they must press on. As they did so, Dad heard Verner say, as if to himself,
'
Microcephalous
! A case of simian survival!' The meaning of these phrases escaped him.

             
"At length, even Verner, who seemed made of iron, had to call a halt
.
He spoke to
Dato
Burung in low tones, and a camp was set up. My father, now stumbling with fatigue and insect-bitten to the limit, was gently passed along the line of marchers, until placed in the circle formed around the tiny fire they had lit
.
At this point, he related, he would not have cared much if they had told him that he was the main course in the evening meal.

             
"He roused himself, though, when he saw Verner seated next to him on the same rotting log. The fellow was almost as cool-looking as he had been on the
prau
after his recovery and, to my father's amazement, was in the act of fitting a clean paper collar to his very tattered shirt
.
God knows where he got it
.

             
"At my father's gaze, something must have penetrated this strange person's subconscious mind. He finished dealing with his collar and without any affectation laid his hand on my father's knee.

             
"I fear that you are still in doubt, My dear chap,' he said in vibrant tones. 'We are now far enough from the hue and cry so that one may elaborate without any fear of indiscretion. Pray tell me how I can serve you. Is there any matter on your mind?' The tones were as soft and caressing as those of a woman, and the man's whole attitude so charged with sympathy that my father almost wept
.
Exhausted and bemused as he was by what had transpired around him in
the last twenty-four hours, he nevertheless retained enough energy to ask why this extraordinary jaunt through a trackless wilderness was necessary?

             
" 'The matter is quite plain,' returned his singular congener. 'We are going to call upon a local ruler who is apparently dead, a native people who, though certainly native, are not people, and a ship due to be charged with more misery than any vessel that ever floated on this planet's seas. Finally we shall, I trust, destroy the scientific works of one Van Ouisthoven, who has been seemingly dead for fifteen years.'

             
"This flood of lunacy was too much for my father, who had been both physically and
mentally taxed almost beyond endurance. He fell asleep, slumped over his own rotting log, even as he heard the final words of Verner's explanation. Yet the words stayed in his memory, so much so that even at his life's end, he could still recite them to me.

             
"It was not, however, to be a sleepless night
.
The noises of the great tropical rain forest were no doubt designed to make newcomers uncomfortable, but my father was an old stager at this sort of thing. Yet the cries of the civet cats, the hooting of the fish owls, the usual noises of insect and tree frog, none of these would have been sufficient to wake Dad. Suddenly, as he recollected, about 1 a.m., Verner and old Burung shook him awake. 'Listen,' hissed Verner, who actually grasped him by the collar.

             
"At first, my father heard nothing. There were the normal tropic sounds, the night wind in the great trees, the innumerable insects, locusts and such, the faraway cry of a sleepy gibbon, and that was all. But Verner's grip remained tight on his collar, and so he listened. He could smell the reek of old Burung on the other side, full of garlic and menace, but the silence and the attention of the two finally got to him as well.

             
"Then he heard it
.
Over all the normal night noises, he heard the chatter of a squirrel. No one can mistake that nasty,
scolding sound, and it came first from one side of the camp and then the other. The sound is the same in the Temperate Zone as it is in the tropics. But and mind you, my father was an old tropic hand and a noted
shikari
squirrels are not animals of the night. No scientist to this day has found anything but the flying squirrels active at night. And they are silent, or almost so. Also, this was deeper in pitch.

             
"Mixed with the chattering was a gruff, snarling bark, though that seemed to come only at intervals. Anything else he might have thought was shaken out of him by Verner. 'That is the enemy, Captain. They have already taken one sentry. Do you now feel my precautions to be unnecessary?'

             
"If this were not enough, the next thing was a sort of strangled choking noise from the other side of camp. Verner darted off like a flash, and came back almost as quickly. 'Another gone,' he said. 'We must move on in the morning, or they will pick us off like so many flies on a side of beef.' My father roused himself long enough to see that two more of the crew were detailed to stand sentry go, and then he relapsed once more into exhausted slumber. But, as he lay down, he was very conscious that something out in the great black forest was a hideous danger, clear and present. He fell asleep with dread on his soul.

             
"My father remembered nothing until he was roughly shaken in the first light of morning. He felt, and was, filthy, as well as being still tired, confused and angry at the way Verner had somehow pirated the loyalty of his men. Then he remembered the incidents of the night. He looked over and saw the very man himself, bent over a log which he was using as a table, in deep converse with my father's, or Rajah Brooke's, own captain, Burung. Ignoring the native crewman who was trying to give him sustenance in the form of cold rice, my father lurched over to the duo, who were his captors as he then felt.

             
"Verner looked up coldly at first, then seeing who had
caused the interruption, smiled. It
was the same glacial smile, to be sure, a mere rictus, but the strange man actually rose from his seat, and, as if by osmosis, so did
Dato
Burung.

             
" 'Just the man we wanted,' said Verner. 'My dear chap, do come and look at this map. It purports to be the mouth of the river
Lubuk
Rajah. I fear you will be disappointed to learn that it was once considered by some to be the Biblical Ophir. The whole idea is, of course, beyond any reasoned belief. I, myself, when in the
Mekran
, found that
... Still, a most interesting and primitive area, geologically speaking: There is a young Dutch physician in these islands, Dubois, I believe, who is laying the ground for some splendid work on human origins. He is unknown to you? Strange how the body controls the mind, in terms of limitation, that is.'

             
"My father, who was, on his own admission to me given many years later on, only half awake, ignored this rambling and stared out on the rude table before him. There was indeed a river mouth and a small harbor. As an officer of the British Army, he was familiar with planes and gradients of the landscape, but here were other things on this map. There were lines, in various colors, extending around a central area. This central part appeared to be a settlement of some sort
.
In short, it looked like any typical village on any Southeast Asian coast, as observed and recorded by a European cartographer. Except for the odd lines, that is.

             
"He next heard his mentor, for so Verner had come to seem, in the same tone, but in excellent Malay, state the following: 'Those are their lines. They have an inner and an outer defensive circuit. We shall have to somehow go between them. Do you have any suggestions?'

             
" 'Look here, Verner,' said my father. 'What the Hell are you planning to do?' Nothing but fatigue, he told me, would have made him use language of this degree of coarseness.

             
" 'I had thought it would have been apparent to any child with even a board school education,' said Verner,
turning back to stare at him with those strange eyes. 'I propose to destroy this entire village, root and branch, females, young, the whole as our American cousins put it shebang. All at once. And I fear that I am compelled to ask for your direct assistance in the matter.'

             
"My father stared at him. He was, after all, a British officer, charged with spreading our native virtues,
Pax
Britannica and all that it implied in those days. He was told now that he was to assist in totally obliterating some native village in a foreign colonial possession! It was fantastic! Do please remember this was long before genocide became a word in the English language.

             
"
Dato
Burung said something to Verner in Malay, but so fast and low that my father totally failed to grasp it
.

             
" 'Quite so,' said Verner, 'but we have none and should we seek a prisoner, we stand the risk of further alerting all the others. No, I think the
Tuan
, captain, will have to sleep. Then, perhaps he and I may make the trail together, and once and for all see what Van Ouisthoven's work has come to. Strange that this whole matter should have grown from a simple assessment of mining machinery.' This last sentence was in English.

             
"My father was at this point, utterly out of his wits, strength, and did indeed fall silent
.
His
next memories as he listened were those of hearing Verner say, in his clipped tones, and musingly in English, 'There are strange rhythms in world events, yet none stranger than that of unpaid businessmen!'

             
"They were now on the march in the usual blazing dawn. They had wound, in the previous day's journey, much closer to the coast than he had thought. Only a few mangroves and giant Java plums kept them from the glare of light, which now burst over the hills to the east
.
The day brought with it the inevitable cloud of insect horrors to replace the night's mosquitoes. His face puffed up and his eyes swollen, my father faced Verner the man had the same catlike neatness, despite their march at a trail fork and demanded to know who was in charge.

             
"He looked at my father coolly enough. His first words cut off anything my father was impelled to say, quite short
.

             
" 'Do you know, Captain, anything about general assurance companies? No? I rather thought not
.
Then you will have heard nothing of Messrs. Morrison, Morrison and Dodd. You will be pleased to know that a highly respectable firm, of Mincing Lane, no less, is the cause of your present discomfort.' On receiving nothing but the blankest of looks from Dad, he continued in the same light, jocular vein, obviously amused to make some mystery of his remarks, as though, Dad said, they were not mysterious enough already.

             
" 'All I know, Sir,' interrupted my father, 'is that you have mishandled me in the most outrageous fashion, suborned and subverted my officers and men, the employees of His Highness, the Rajah of Sarawak, and finally taken us away on some dubious journey for an unnamed purpose. I insist, sir, that you tell me what
—
' At this point my father fell silent, for as his voice rose, a wave of Verner's hand had caused a cloth to be thrown over his mouth by one of the burliest of his own crewmen, and despite his struggles, he was flung back upon a nearby tree trunk in the most compelling way. During all this, Verner continued to regard him in the most placid manner. When he had waited, as my father was compelled to admit, for his struggles to cease, he again waved his hand and the swaddling was removed. Meanwhile, Dad had seen old Umpa, his faithful servant, sworn to guard him with his life, quietly picking his teeth across the way!