The Romantic Adventures of Mr. Darby and of Sarah His Wife (54 page)

‘Bear up, sir. Keep going a little longer. I have a feeling, a very strong feeling, sir, that our troubles will soon be over.'

Mr. Darby sighed deeply and shook his head, and the bearers once more lifted him to their shoulders.

•    •    •    •    •    •    •    •

Their course through the open, rock-strewn country of Tongal was attended by a growing swarm of native women and children who poured from the adjacent villages to welcome their victorious warriors and jeer at the prisoners. At noon of the fifth day they reached a great stockade guarding a close fence of bamboo, taller than the height of a man. Even Mr. Darby, aloft on his litter, could not see over it. It was Aba Taana, the Queen's Village. They entered a guarded gateway and the watching crowd broke out into a raucous song of triumph that filled the air with hot and hideous noise.

And now Mr. Darby found himself within a high-fenced arena, even huger than Umwaddi Taan. A lofty straw-thatched hall, surrounded by smaller huts, stood in the middle of it. The hall and the huts were built, not on piles as was the style in Mandras, but on the ground-level. The procession moved with slow pomp towards the royal hall. Outside it they stopped, the litter was set down, and Mr. Darby was made to stand up. His crown was placed upon his head, his parrot cloak thrown round him. Outwardly calm, inwardly sick with fear, he waited for the next event. What were they waiting for? He turned his head and saw, to his intense relief, that Punnett, his arms no longer bound, stood close behind him with the five Mandrat chiefs whose pinioned arms a great black-bodied Tongali was unbinding. When the fifth chief had been loosed Mr. Darby in his kingly crown and robe, but unroyally and ignominiously on foot, was led forward and the procession entered the hall.

At the far end of the hall on a raised throne backed by a
huge fan of peacocks' feathers sat a large figure crowned with a great head-dress of blue and crimson ostrich feathers and wrapped in a multi-coloured robe. Attendants were clustered upon its right and left. The triumph-song had ended outside the hall and now they advanced slowly and in absolute silence towards the throne. Mr. Darby walked with downcast eyes. He was tired, so tired that he felt himself incapable of any new effort. What was going to happen next he wondered, but his wondering was little more than a vague, apathetic curiosity. A low muttering rose in the hall and through it he heard Punnett's voice behind him. ‘Safe at last, sir. Look at the Queen.'

But instead of looking at the Queen Mr. Darby glanced back at Punnett. At the same moment the Mandrat chief nearest to him sprang at him. In the fraction of time in which he instinctively started aside, there flashed on Mr. Darby's perception with an indelible vividness the mad, white eyes of the face that was hurled towards him and the white gleam of a blade in the clenched black fist. Mr. Darby felt the dagger pierce his body, felt himself collapse, plunge down some enormous depth, and die. But he had not moved: the hurtling black shape had never reached him. Something else had happened.

For Punnett, as usual, had risen to the occasion. How, Mr. Darby never knew; but Punnett had intercepted that hurtling body, and next moment he fell, striking Mr. Darby with his head and nearly knocking him down as he fell at his feet. There he lay on his back, and Mr. Darby, staring down at him, saw through spectacles black with horror the ivory handle of a dagger planted in his breast. Punnett raised his chest convulsively and then lay still, as Mr. Darby, forgetful of all else, sank on his knees. ‘Punnett!' he cried. ‘Punnett! Is it …? Is it bad?'

Someone else was kneeling by Punnett now, two other people; and then Mr. Darby heard a voice, a voice that robbed him of his last hold on reality and plunged him into a confused world of dream.

‘Keep out of the way, Jim. Let the doctor get at him.'

Mr. Darby raised his head, stared into the face of Sarah, and lost consciousness.

At that'moment Punnett opened his eyes and smiled sadly at Sarah. He was trying to speak. Sarah leaned over him. ‘I've brought him back to you, Madam,' he whispered. ‘I thought …!' His voice failed for a moment and Sarah leaned her head closer. ‘I thought once or twice I wasn't … going … to manage.' He closed his eyes; a shudder ran over his body and his eyes opened again. ‘Excuse me, Madam!'

It was Punnett's last apology, his apology for dying.

The Gulf of Tongal, as any good atlas will show, is formed by the semi-circular sweep of coast where the north-western shore of the Mandratic Peninsula swings westward into the main coastline of Eutyca.

The yacht which Sarah had chartered at Sydney had just left her moorings in the Gulf and was steaming southwards, and the ex-King of Mandras and the ex-Queen of Tongal, peacefully seated under the deck awning, at last found time for conversation. They wore European dress. Their crowns and robes, mementoes of an experience which had more than satisfied even Mr. Darby's hunger for romance, had been carefully bestowed in a trunk. Mr. Darby's flannel suit, which had fitted him perfectly in the old days at home, appeared grievously fallen-in in front, for a fever, caught during his long journeys through the jungle and aggravated by his recent appalling experiences had kept him raving during the last week. They had carried him, unconscious still, from the strange scene of reunion in the Queen's hall in Aba Taana to the yacht which had been waiting at anchor during the eight months in which Sarah's search-party had scoured the south-western coast of Eutyca and the whole of the Tongali territory for traces of Mr. Darby and Punnett. Fortunately his recovery, under the care of Sarah and her doctor, had been rapid, and already, though still somewhat shaky, he was, in mind if not in body, his old self again.

‘Well, I must say, Jim,' said Sarah, smiling maternally at the little man, ‘you've led me a dance. I might just as well have come with you at the start, seeing that I've been let in for all this exploring in any case. All I can say is, I hope you liked the place better than I did.'

‘Like it?' said Mr. Darby.' I hate it. It's … ah …
what I should call Hell, Sarah. No! No more adventures for me, no more jungles, no more green parrots, no more scarlet orchids, thank you. Thank God they're all safely behind me.' He heaved a deep, satisfied sigh.

‘Yes, thank God! And you can thank me, too, Jim. There aren't many women that would have put up with it, I can tell you, husband or no husband.'

Mr. Darby smiled guiltily. ‘But tell me, Sarah, what put it into your head that I wasn't drowned?'

‘Well, what do you think, Jim? Poor Punnett, of course. When I heard that Punnett had gone overboard too, and not only Punnett but a couple of life-buoys as well, I knew there was a chance for you. If you'd gone over alone, I'd have ordered my mourning and said no more. But you'd only got to have a word or two with Punnett to see that he was a man in a thousand. He told me, in his quiet way, that I could rely on him, but I knew it already without his telling me. He gave his life for yours, Jim; don't you forget it.' She fumbled for a handkerchief. ‘And to think,' she said in a voice husky with tears,' that I couldn't so much as thank him. But he would know, Punnett would know all right what I felt.'

Mr. Darby stared in front of him with spectacles glittering like diamonds, and for a while they sat silent.

‘The
Utopia
put back for you, you know Jim; they put back fifty miles, but there wasn't a trace of you. The captain said he hadn't much hope because of the sharks.'

‘Sharks?' said Mr. Darby. ‘I didn't know there were sharks. Punnett didn't mention sharks.'

‘He wouldn't,' Sarah replied. ‘He'd have enough of a job keeping you quiet without mentioning sharks, I'll be bound. But how long were you in the water, Jim?'

‘Oh, a matter of a few hours, Sarah,' said Mr. Darby nonchalantly.

‘A few hours? We made all sorts of enquiries about the currents, and they told us you'd be sure to be carried right up into the Gulf of Tongal.'

‘I don't suppose they know very much about the currents
in England,' Mr. Darby replied with a touch of scorn. Already he was beginning to remember England's obtuseness in some matters. ‘So that's why you made for Tongal, Sarah. But why did they make you Queen?'

Ever since he had regained consciousness Mr. Darby had been troubled by a small, secret annoyance—an annoyance which, even if he had been aware of it, he would not have confessed even to himself—at Sarah's achievement of royal rank. It seemed fated that whenever, after infinite labours, he attained to some new eminence, reached, as it were, a yet higher plateau on the mountain of human greatness, he must always find Sarah, through no effort of her own, no desire to compete with him, coolly waiting for him on a slightly higher altitude.

‘Oh,' said Sarah impatiently, ‘it was a silly business but it served its purpose. It was all owing to a fever, a sort of'flu they were having. It was something new to them and when we arrived three months ago they were having a terrible attack of it in Aba Taana. So we dosed them with quinine and aspirin. Fortunately we had lots of both on board. As you know, Jim, I've always had a great faith in aspirin. That soon put them right,—all, that is, except the King. He died of it: but then he was so terribly fat that he hadn't a chance from the first. You see, he took no exercise. They had a ridiculous idea that he mustn't walk.'

‘
I
know,' said Mr. Darby feelingly. ‘My people had the same idea about me.'

‘Well, they tried it on me when they made me Queen, but I soon put a stop to that nonsense.'

‘You … ah … you defied them, Sarah.'

‘Certainly,' Sarah replied. ‘You've got to treat those sort of people like children: it's the only way to manage them. That's why I let them make me Queen. They wanted to: they said I was the great white enchantress, or some such childishness, because the quinine and aspirin had cured their' flu: so as it seemed likely to be more convenient on the whole, not only for us but for them, I consented. But the trouble I had with them, Jim! I'd rather run an infant-school
any day. If you knew the job I had to get them to kill mosquitoes for instance. The doctor said that very likely mosquitoes were the cause of this'flu. But they said mosquitoes were sacred and that I was the Mosquito Queen. “Very well,” I said, “I'm the Mosquito Queen and I command you to kill mosquitoes!” That worried them dreadfully. They got terribly excited and for a whole night we thought they were going crazy. But they came round in the end; and now the mosquito isn't sacred any longer in Tongal, or rather, only the particular mosquito who happens to be King or Queen.' Sarah grunted sardonically. ‘That was one reform anyhow; but it would be a life's work to put anything like common sense into them, and, upon my word, they hardly seemed worth while, even if I hadn't had you on my hands.'

‘To be shaw!' said Mr. Darby. It was soothing, exquisitely soothing to him now to be treated by Sarah as a child. And the blessed comfort and security of this yacht, with the pleasant Australian captain and crew, the pleasant, friendly members of Sarah's search party, the doctor, the young Cambridge man who had acted as interpreter, and the others who had not yet become quite real to him. What a marvellous change from the horrible life of the last year, a life like a mad dream of snakes and blue devils and nightmare forests.

And yet how lovely the Peninsula looked now as they steamed along its silver coast; the rosy pink of the rocks, the vivid emerald of the jungle, rising, screen behind screen, from the mottled rose and silver of the shore, and the great orange-stained ivory dome of Umfo, the ankle-bone of Mandratia, protruding starkly and grandly above the matted forests. Umfo, in its beautiful fallacious serenity, was typical of the whole Peninsula, thought Mr. Darby, recalling the swarming village of savages that raged, like an angry, seething brain, within the summit of that bland exterior.

‘And yet,' he said, indicating the coast with a sweeping gesture, ‘there's no denying, Sarah, that it's extraordinarily beautiful.'

‘Oh, it's beautiful enough, I grant you,' Sarah replied, ‘especially from here. Distance lends enchantment, Jim. And the flowers, I must say I never saw anything like them. I used to make my women in Aba Taana go out and get me different kinds of orchids, and you never saw such a show as they sometimes brought in. I wish I could have taken a few plants home; they'd have looked well in pots in the dining-room. The Savershills' conservatories can't touch them; not even the conservatories at Blanchford.' She gave one of her grim chuckles. ‘From housemaid at Blanchford to Queen of Tongal,—a bit of a jump, isn't it, Jim, when you come to think of it?'

‘Oh, no doubt! No doubt!' Mr. Darby replied, hastily dismissing the idea.

And now the Peninsula, slowly, imperceptibly shifting and changing along its length under the influence of the yacht's progress, began to disclose the belt of desert that bisected it.

‘Look, Sarah,' said Mr. Darby, ‘there's our frontier,—my northern and your southern frontier. I wish I had my telescope: with it one might even catch sight of an Ompà or two. A horrible place, that desert! I crossed it three times, Sarah. Did you visit it at all?'

‘No, your folk didn't give us the chance,' Sarah replied, ‘and I'm glad, now, they didn't. We were just trying to arrange about moving south and searching Mandras when your folk raided us. Now what possessed you, Jim, to let them do that?'

Mr. Darby coloured slightly. ‘It was what I should call a slip, Sarah, a trifling … ah … misinterpretation.'

‘H'm!' said Sarah laconically. ‘Trifling, was it? I suppose you didn't happen to see, as I did, the forty-nine corpses that were the result of it? Ten of our people and thirty-nine Mandrats!'