The Rev. Arthur Rosebury passed many miserable hours when the sun was down, for then he began to think of Helen Perowne, and wondered where she was. It was a terrible thought that she was in the power of the Malays; and in a dreamy, despairing manner, he wondered how matters were at the station, and whether any steps would be taken to set him at liberty.

But as soon as the daylight came there was solace for the solitary prisoner, for he was amongst wonderful plants, such as he had never before seen, and his guards or attendants, whichever they might be called, were always ready to help him, and to supply him with any specimens he required.

He had lost count of time by devoting himself so earnestly to the botanical treasures of the garden; and one morning, after asking himself whether he ought not to make some effort to escape, he was out in the grounds of his prison-house once more, when, having pretty well exhausted its treasures, he walked straight to the gate.

His guard, who had been seated beneath the veranda calmly chewing his betel-nut, snatched out his kris, and darted fiercely after the chaplain, who was evidently about to escape; but on coming in sight of the prisoner, and finding him stooping over a cluster of orchids in a damp place in the jungle, the man stopped short, a contemptuous smile crossed his face, and he slowly replaced his kris, folded his arms and leaned against a tree.

In his eyes the botanist was a simple maniac, and so long as he made no vigorous effort to escape, it did not seem to matter if he went a little way into the jungle to collect his plants.

Stepping back quietly a few yards, the man held up his hands in a peculiar way, and a couple of dark figures armed with spears, glided from the house to his side, the little party crouching down amongst the dense growth, and holding a consultation for a few minutes, the result of which was that the two last arrivals glided back a short distance, while the principal guard slowly followed the chaplain some twenty or thirty yards behind, and always unseen by him he watched. The foliage was so dense that there was never the slightest difficulty in this, and hence it was that as the Reverend Arthur, forgetful now of everything but his favourite pursuit, went slowly on into the more easily penetrated parts of the jungle, his guards were always close at hand, forming as it were the links of a chain between his prison and himself.

At intervals he would perhaps stop and think of Helen, wondering where she was, and whether he ought not to make some strenuous effort to find her; but as often as not, in the midst of these thoughts, he would catch sight of some fresh flower or woodland moss, objects that he had worshipped long before Helen Perowne had disturbed the tranquillity of his peaceful life, and then he would eagerly stoop down to pick it, most likely ending by kneeling in some wet place, while he fixed a powerful lens in his eye, examined the plant carefully, and stopped to think. Then most likely he would pick some huge leaf to lay upon the ground, and with that as tray to hold the various portions of his specimen, he would take out a penknife, and proceed to dissect the plant, examining its various parts with the greatest care before making the most rigid notes, and then consigning his treasure to the basket he had brought with him.

This went on day after day, till he got into the habit of going off directly after his morning meal, and penetrating some distance along some narrow jungle path, generally losing himself completely at last, and pausing to stare about him, hungry, faint, and bewildered.

It was always the same; after staring about him for a few minutes, wondering what he should do, and feeling oppressed by the vastness and silence of the jungle, he would catch sight of a tall dark figure, standing some little distance off, leaning upon a spear, and go to it for help.

The quiet helplessness of the prisoner seemed to win his guards over to him; and as day after day glided slowly by, and he showed not the slightest disposition to make an attempt at escape, he was allowed more latitude by the Malays and travelled farther and farther from the place that had been made his prison.

It was only natural under the circumstances, that, with the cord that metaphorically held him so much relaxed, it would grow weaker and weaker, and so it proved. In fact, had the chaplain been as other men were, he would have had but little difficulty in making his escape. But after thinking deeply of the possibilities of getting away, the Reverend Arthur concluded that not only was it next to impossible, but that, situated as he was, it was his duty to stay where he was, especially as he believed himself to be near Helen, who was also a captive, and whom, sooner or later, he would be called upon to help and protect. He had, too, a half-formed, nebulous idea that it would be better to leave matters to fate, for in his helpless state he could do nothing; and then one day he began to think that his wanderings about the jungle might prove beneficial in giving him a knowledge of the country, and on the day in question this idea had come upon him strongly.

He actually reproached himself for being so supine, and went off uninterrupted for some distance, growing more and more animated as he went, and telling himself that he felt sure Helen Perowne was somewhere near, and that he must strive to find her.

The result was that he walked laboriously on for miles, till he was hot, weary, and exhausted; and then seating himself upon the trunk of a huge palm, which being situated in a more open place than usual, had been blown down by some furious gale, he began to wipe the drenching perspiration from his face, sighed deeply, and then saw clustering close by his feet a magnificent group of orchids of a species that was quite new.

The Reverend Arthur Rosebury had gone on well into middle life without so much as dreaming of love, and then he had seen Helen Perowne, and his love for her had not prospered. Still it had burned on steadily and brightly month after month, and only wanting a little fostering care upon the lady’s part to make it burst forth into a brilliant flame; but somehow his old pursuits retained an enormous power over his spirit, and although upon this particular day he had come out determined to make some effort – what he hardly knew, but still to make some effort – he was turned at once from his project by the flowers at his feet; and that day Helen’s face troubled him no more.

Heat, hunger, and weariness were all forgotten, and he did not even look round to see if either of his guards was there, though all the same the principal of them had for the last hour been following him with lowering looks. Quite out of patience, and hot and exhausted in his turn, he was about to close up, take the chaplain by the arm, and lead him back, when he saw him seat himself, and soon after stoop down and begin to pick the plants, digging some of them up completely by the roots, and spreading them before him for a long investigation.

The Malay smiled with satisfaction, and the lowering, angry look left his face. He, too, found a resting-place, took out his eternal betel-box, and prepared his piece of nut, chewing away contentedly, like some ruminating animal, and keeping his eyes fixed upon the Reverend Arthur as he busied himself with his plants, cutting, laying open, and making notes. As in the distance the Malay saw the chaplain’s pencil going, he slowly sank back into a more comfortable position; then his eyes began to open and shut, and open and shut, and then forget to open, so that by the time the prisoner had begun to gather up his specimens, a happy smile of content upon his lip, the guard was lying right back, hidden amongst the dense growth, sleeping heavily, and half-covered by different kinds of insects which were investigating the nature of the strange being that had taken possession of their domain.

The time passed, and then the chaplain rose refreshed by his long rest, looked round to see which way he had come, and after satisfying himself that he was quite right, went off in a direction that, for taking him back to whence he came, was quite wrong.

It did not trouble him though in the least, for his mind was intent upon the plants he passed; and so accustomed was he to giving up his thoughts entirely to such pursuits as this, that he was quite lost to everything else, and he went slowly on, finding himself in a more open portion of the jungle, and surrounded on all sides by new plants.

It was a perfect paradise to him, and he did not feel the want of an Eve, but culled the specimens here and there, careless of the fact that there was no path where he was, no trace of human beings having been there before, but there were choice specimens in abundance, and that was enough for him.

Once only did his thoughts go back to his friends, and that was when with much difficulty he had forced his way through some dense thorns with unfortunate results to his clothes.

“I am afraid that Mary would be rather angry,” he muttered, “if she saw me now. Poor Mary! how happy she seems with the doctor; but she is just a little too strict sometimes.”

Thinking about his sister, he went on in the most abstracted manner, the thoughts of his sister bringing up Helen Perowne, and he went on talking to himself half aloud, while a flock of parroquets in the trees above his head kept travelling on with him, flitting from branch to branch, climbing by foot and beak, hanging by one leg, heads up and heads down, and always seeming to watch him, and be mocking and gibing at him like a set of green and scarlet feathered implings who made derisive gestures, while they were astounded at the sight of an English clergyman journeying through that savage place.

“I’m afraid dear Mary would not like it,” he said, simply, “even if finally Helen were to give me her consent. And yet dear Mary would never be able to resist so much beauty as Helen possesses. I wonder where she is now?”

He sighed deeply, and then paused to consider the beauty of a lovely acacia with its graceful pinnate leaves. Then came a hard struggle through a dense cane-break which left him hot and panting.

“It’s much pleasanter travelling through the English woods,” he said. “The heat here is very trying, and I’m getting faint and hungry. I’m afraid I’ve lost my way.”

He looked about for some little time, but saw nothing till he had dragged his weary legs on for about another half-mile, when the appearance of the ground told him that people had not long since passed that way.

“Then I shall find a village,” he said, “and the people will give or sell me something, and – Bless me, how strange!”

He stopped short and listened, but all was still but the chattering and whistling of the birds.

“It must have been one of the parrots,” he said, “but it sounded remarkably like a woman’s voice. It is an unaccountable thing to me how it is that nature should have given the parrot family so remarkable a power of imitating the human voice. Now, as I walked along there I could have been sure that a woman had called to me aloud for help. It sounded very peculiar in this wild jungle, echoing and strange, and it seemed to startle me.”

There was a regular chorus of whistling and chattering just now, and the chaplain started, for there came directly after a loud whirring of wings; the air seemed full of flashes of green, and blue, and scarlet, and then the stillness was almost painful.

“How easily one may be deceived!” he said, quietly. “One notices such things more when one is tired and hungry; and it is very dull work to be alone out here. I wish Bolter could be my companion and – there it was again.”

The chaplain stopped short and listened, for a wild cry certainly rang out now; and, willing as he was to attribute the strange noise to a bird, it seemed impossible that it could have proceeded from one of them.

“If it is a cry,” the chaplain said, hastily, “I must be very near to a village, and someone is in trouble.”

The idea of help being needed roused him so that he hurried on, and kept thrusting back the hanging and running canes which impeded his way, till at the end of a few minutes he came suddenly upon an open space surrounded by trees, with evidently a broad track, leading away towards what, from the difference in the growth of the foliage, must be a stream.

Away to the right he could see the gable-end of what was apparently a large palm-thatched house, and over it there was a group of magnificent cocoa-palms, such as at another time would have secured his attention; but now different feelings were awakened, for from out of a low clump of trees he suddenly saw a Malay woman come running, her gay silken sarong and scarf fluttering in the breeze.

She saw him evidently, and made signs to him, which, instead of attracting him to her side, made him shrink away.

“It is some quarrel among themselves,” he muttered, for he recalled the advice he had heard given him as to his behaviour to the people, and the danger of interfering with their home lives.

As he thought this, he stopped, and was about to turn away, when a fresh cry smote his ear, and the woman ran a few paces towards him, tottered as she caught her foot in a trailing cane, and fell heavily to the ground.

Volume Two – Chapter Twenty Seven.
A Desperate Attempt

More long weary days of stifling heat, without a breath of air to relieve the oppression, and more hot suffocating nights, during which, half wild with terror and despair, Helen, like some newly-captured bird, had beaten the bars of her prison in vain.

She had appealed to the Malay girl, but only for her to turn away and seem at last weary and troubled by the importunity she had received. Then she had appealed to the second girl, who was of a morose jealous aspect, and who evidently detested her. But all appeal here was vain, for the girl evidently did not understand her words, and turned sullenly away. It was so, too, with the rest of the women, who came to the door and just entered the room in obedience to some call.

But Helen might as well have appealed to the trees that stood tall and columnar just outside the prison window. Those who did not understand her words looked at her with a heavy scowl; while those who could comprehend laughed, or made her keep away from them, for they disliked her coming, and their eyes plainly told the hatred that there was in their hearts. Beside which, they knew the punishment that would fall to their lot should they go in opposition to their lord’s orders, and the danger was too great to tempt the most willing of them to run any risks.

The girl who had been most gentle to her, and who had not scrupled to talk freely about her own affairs, now seemed to keep aloof; and feeling more and more her helplessness, Helen awoke to the fact that if she were to escape from her present durance it must be by her own effort.

In this spirit she tried to restrain herself, and waited patiently for some opportunity for communicating with her friends; though when this opportunity would come she was obliged to confess was doubtful in the extreme.

Naturally enough her thoughts turned to writing, and feeling the folly of applying in a place like her prison for pens and paper, she set herself to contrive some means upon which she could describe her position, finding it at last in the form of a book, one of whose fly-leaves she covered with a pitiful appeal to any Englishman who would read it, and imploring help. This she kept by her, ready to send should opportunity occur, and still the dreary days glided by.

There was one redeeming point, though, in her captivity, and that was the fact that so far she had not been troubled by a visit from Murad; but at last one morning, when the fresh beauty of the scene outside her window and the elasticity of the brisk air made her feel more cheerful than of old, she awoke to the fact that there was a little stir about the place; the women calling to each other and seeming busier than was their wont. The two girls who acted as Helen’s gaolers ran to the glass as soon as they entered, and with all the coquetry of some London belle in her first season, placed wreaths of white flowers in their braids, twisted their sarongs into more graceful folds, and then turned their attention to Helen.

She refused to allow them to approach her at first, but her resistance was useless, and finding that without violence there were no means of overcoming their tolerably good-humoured pertinacity, she submitted, wearily telling them to do what they pleased, when one, the most friendly, insisted upon taking down her magnificent hair.

“Only to make it more beautiful,” she said.

At this moment the other woman left the room.

“Will you help me to escape?” said Helen, quickly, as soon as they were alone.

“No; I dare not. Murad would have me killed.”

“Then will you send this paper by a messenger down to the station?”

“Paper?” said the girl, wonderingly.

“Yes, paper. I have written for help; send it by a messenger. Here are my rings and watch to pay him for going. Take them, and if you have any womanly feeling, help me now.”

“I cannot; I dare not,” whispered the woman; but Helen forced paper and trinkets into her hand, just as the second attendant was heard coming, when her companion burst out into one of the minor songs of the country, and busied herself with her task.

Helen’s heart gave one great throb of hope, and raising her eyes to those of her attendant, she read there that her message would be sent.

The second woman brought in a bunch of what seemed to be a kind of waxy yellow jasmine of an extremely powerful odour. These she proceeded to twine in and amongst Helen’s magnificent dark hair; and when the prisoner shudderingly attempted to resist, feeling as she did that she was being decked out for, as it were, a sacrifice, the flower-bearer stormed at her angrily in the Malay tongue, and seemed to threaten her with some severe punishment if she persisted in tearing them out.

“It would be childish to keep on opposing them,” thought Helen, whose spirits were lighter now that she had found some means, as she hoped, of communicating with the station; and she resigned herself to her attendant’s clever hands.

As she sat back, listening languidly to the whistling, chattering noise of the parroquets that swarmed in the jungle, she felt a pang shoot through her, for very faintly heard there was a sound familiar to her ear – a sound that she had frequently listened to at her open window at the station. It was the plashing of oars coming from a distance, and she felt that at last the Rajah was approaching the place, to see his prisoner.

Helen’s teeth gritted together as she set them hard, calling upon herself for all her fortitude and strength of mind for what she knew must be a terrible ordeal.

The scene at home on that morning when Murad had come to propose for her hand came back most vividly, and for the moment she trembled as she realised the evil she had done.

She recovered herself though somewhat, and striving hard to be prepared for what was to come, sat listening and wondering whether Murad really was close at hand.

She had not long to wait in indecision, and she knew that her hearing had not played her false, for the two girls had heard the same sound, and running to the window, stood listening as the plash of oars now came nearer and nearer.

Then the sounds ceased, and there was to Helen a painful silence. The heat grew oppressive, and the leaves hung motionless in the glowing air. For the moment it seemed like one of the oppressive July days in her old school; but the fancy was gone directly after, and the horrors of her position came back so strongly that she could hardly refrain from running wildly about the room and crying for help.

Just then the two girls left the window, and crossed to where Helen was seated, darting at her, as it seemed in her then excited condition, furious and angrily envious looks before turning now to the doorway, passing through, and letting the great curtain fall behind.

As Helen waited her heart began to beat violently, for there was no mistaking the import of the sounds she heard. So far they had been women’s voices, now unmistakably they were men’s; and growing more and more agitated, and ready to start at every sound, she sat waiting for the interview that she knew must come.

To her surprise the day glided on till the afternoon was well advanced, and still, beyond the occasional sound of male voices, there was nothing to distinguish between this day and any other, save that once, when left alone together, the Malay girl whispered to her:

“I have sent a messenger with your paper, but he may never take it where you wish.”

Before Helen could declare her thankfulness the girl was gone, giving place to the other, who looked at her morosely, and then stood leaning by the door till a loud voice called her, and she answered, going out quickly, while Helen sat trembling and pressing her hand upon her palpitating heart.

Could it be true? and if true, were there not attendants waiting to guard the entrance, for unmistakably it seemed that the Malay girl had hurried to obey the call and left the door open.

Helen rose, and walked with tottering step to the door, to find that not only was it open, but that there was no one in the room beyond – a room whose door opened straight upon a kind of bamboo veranda, with a flight of steps down to the ground; while beyond that was a clearing, and then the jungle.

She paused for a minute listening. There was not a sound but the loud whistling and chattering of the birds in the trees. The place might have been deserted, everything was so still; and it did not occur to her that this was a time when many of the people would be asleep till the heat of the day was past.

It was enough for her that the way to freedom was there; and hesitating no longer, she passed out into the farther room, reached the door unseen, and was in the act of descending the flight of steps, when one of the Malay women of the place saw and ran at her, catching her by the dress and arm, and holding her so tenaciously, that Helen, in her anguish at being thus checked, uttered a cry for help, escaped her retainer, and then leaped down and ran.

The Malay woman was joined by another now; and in her excitement and ignorance of which way to go, she was driven into a corner, but only to make a brave dash for liberty as the girls caught and held her again.

In her excitement Helen cried again and again for help, forgetful of the fact that she was more likely to summon enemies than friends.

The cries of a woman had little effect there, for beyond bringing out a couple more of the Malay women, Helen’s appeals for help seemed to create no excitement; and she was beginning to feel that her efforts would prove in vain, when she saw a figure come from amongst the trees, and stretching out her hands towards it, she made one last effort to reach what she had looked upon as safety.

For there could be no mistaking that figure. It was the chaplain. At the moment it seemed to her that Arthur Rosebury had been sent there expressly to save her from her terrible position; and half-fainting, panting, and thoroughly exhausted, she tottered on, tripped, and fell.

The effort to escape was vain, for a couple of Malay women seized Helen’s arms and dragged her off, followed by the chaplain, but not for many yards. Before he had gone far he too was seized, and hurried back in the way by which he had come. It was vain to struggle, and he had to resign himself, but it was with feelings mingled with indignation and disgust.

The Malay lady was evidently of superior station by her dress; and that she was ill-used there could be no doubt. His English blood glowed at the thought, and clergyman though he was, and man of peace, he still felt enough spirit to be ready to have undertaken her defence.

He cooled down, though, as he was hurried back through the jungle – cooled in temper, but heated in body; while the faintness and hunger soon increased to such an extent that his adventure with the Malay lady was forgotten.

But not by Helen Perowne, who, once more shut up in her room, rejoiced to think that, though surrounded by enemies, there was one friend near – a true friend whom she could trust – one who would be ready to do anything for her sake, badly as she had behaved to him.

“He cannot be far away,” she said, half aloud, and with the hysterical sobs in her throat. “He is near, and there must be friends with him. He saw me, and he will not lose a minute without bringing help; and then – ”

And then she stopped as if paralysed, for the thought came upon her with a flash that, though the Reverend Arthur Rosebury had seen her, he had only gazed upon a tall, swarthy Malay woman, in whom he could not possibly have recognised Helen Perowne.