Cumners Son and Other South Sea Folk | Page 7

which had risen. A crocodile slipped off a log into the water--he knew that sound; a rank odour came from the river bank--he knew the smell of the hippopotamus.
These very things gave him new courage. Since he came from Eton to Mandakan he had hunted often and well, and once he had helped to quarry the Little Men of the Jungle when they carried off the wife and daughter of a soldier of the Dakoon. The smell and the sound of wild life roused all the hunter in him. He had fear no longer; the primitive emotion of fighting or self-defence was alive in him.
He had left the bridge behind by twice the horse's length, when, all at once, the call of the red bittern rang out the third time, louder than before; then again; and then the cry of a grey wolf came in response.
His peril was upon him. He put spurs to the sorrel. As he did so, dark figures sprang up on all sides of him. Without a word he drove the excited horse at his assailants. Three caught his bridle-rein, and others snatched at him to draw him from his horse.
"Hands off!" he cried, in the language of Mandakan, and levelled his pistol.
"He is English!" said a voice. "Cut him down!"
"I am the Governor's son," said the lad. "Let go." "Cut him down!" snarled the voice again.
He fired twice quickly.
Then he remembered the tribe-call given his father by Pango Dooni. Rising in his saddle and firing again, he called it out in a loud voice. His plunging horse had broken away from two of the murderers; but one still held on, and he slashed the hand free with his sword.
The natives were made furious by the call, and came on again, striking at him with their krises. He shouted the tribe-call once more, but this time it was done involuntarily. There was no response in front of him; but one came from behind. There was clattering of hoofs on Koongat Bridge, and the password of the clan came back to the lad, even as a kris struck him in the leg and drew out again. Once again he called, and suddenly a horseman appeared beside him, who clove through a native's head with a broadsword, and with a pistol fired at the fleeing figures; for Boonda Broke's men who were thus infesting the highway up to Koongat Bridge, and even beyond, up to the Bar of Balmud, hearing the newcomer shout the dreaded name of Pango Dooni, scattered for their lives, though they were yet twenty to two. One stood his ground, and it would have gone ill for Cumner's Son, for this thief had him at fatal advantage, had it not been for the horseman who had followed the lad from the forge-fire to Koongat Bridge. He stood up in his stirrups and cut down with his broadsword, so that the blade was driven through the head and shoulders of his foe as a woodsman splits a log half through, and grunts with the power of his stroke.
Then he turned to the lad.
"What stranger calls by the word of our tribe?" he asked.
"I am Cumner's Son," was the answer, "and my father is brother-in-blood with Pango Dooni. I ride to Pango Dooni for the women and children's sake."
"Proof! Proof! If you be Cumner's Son, another word should be yours."
The Colonel's Son took out the bracelet from his breast. "It is safe hid here," said he, "and hid also under my tongue. If you be from the Neck of Baroob you will know it when I speak it;" and he spoke reverently the sacred countersign.
By a little fire kindled in the road, the bodies of their foe beside them, they vowed to each other, mingling their blood from dagger pricks in the arm. Then they mounted again and rode towards the Neck of Baroob.
In silence they rode awhile, and at last the hillsman said: "If fathers be brothers-in-blood, behold it is good that sons be also."
By this the lad knew that he was now brother-in-blood to the son of Pango Dooni.

III
THE CODE OF THE HILLS
"You travel near to Mandakan!" said the lad. "Do you ride with a thousand men?"
"For a thousand men there are ten thousand eyes to see; I travel alone and safe," answered Tang-a-Dahit.
"To thrust your head in the tiger's jaw," said Cumner's Son. "Did you ride to be in at the death of the men of your clan?"
"A man will ride for a face that he loves, even to the Dreadful Gates," answered Tang-a-Dahit. "But what is this of the men of my clan?"
Then the lad told him of those whose heads hung on the rear Palace wall, where the Dakoon lay dying, and why he rode to Pango Dooni.
"It is fighting and