Number Thirteen noticed that when they addressed him it was always as
Bulan, and upon questioning them he discovered that they had given him
this title of honor partly in view of his wonderful fighting ability
and partly because the sight of his white face emerging from out of the
darkness of the river into the firelight of their blazing camp fire had
carried to their impressionable minds a suggestion of the tropic moon
which they admired and reverenced. Both the name and the idea appealed
to Number Thirteen and from that time he adopted Bulan as his rightful
cognomen.
The loss of time resulting from the fight in the prahu and the ensuing
peace parley permitted Muda Saffir to put considerable distance between
himself and his pursuers. The Malay’s boat was now alone, for of the
eight prahus that remained of the original fleet it was the only one
which had taken this branch of the river, the others having scurried
into a smaller southerly arm after the fight upon the island, that they
might the more easily escape their hideous foemen.
Only Barunda, the headman, knew which channel Rajah Muda Saffir
intended following, and Muda wondered why it was that the two boats
that were to have borne Barunda’s men did not catch up with his. While
he had left Barunda and his warriors engaged in battle with the
strangers he did not for an instant imagine that they would suffer any
severe loss, and that one of their boats should be captured was beyond
belief. But this was precisely what had happened, and the second boat,
seeing the direction taken by the enemy, had turned down stream the
more surely to escape them.
So it was that while Rajah Muda Saffir moved leisurely up the river
toward his distant stronghold waiting for the other boats of his fleet
to overtake him, Barunda, the headman, guided the white enemy swiftly
after him. Barunda had discovered that it was the girl alone this white
man wanted. Evidently he either knew nothing of the treasure chest
lying in the bottom of Muda Saffir’s boat, or, knowing, was
indifferent. In either event Barunda thought that he saw a chance to
possess himself of the rich contents of the heavy box, and so served
his new master with much greater enthusiasm than he had the old.
Beneath the paddles of the natives and the five remaining members of
his pack Bulan sped up the dark river after the single prahu with its
priceless freight. Already six of the creatures of Professor Maxon’s
experiments had given up their lives in the service of his daughter,
and the remaining six were pushing forward through the inky blackness
of the jungle night into the untracked heart of savage Borneo to rescue
her from her abductors though they sacrificed their own lives in the
endeavor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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