A half mile below the camp Tarzan overhauled the survivors. There were ten of them. A sergeant had gathered them together, and was evidently exhorting them to return to the fight. As they turned back, none too enthusiastically, Tarzan fired and brought down the sergeant. A private started to run down the valley. Tarzan fired again, and the man dropped. Now, the others realized that the shots had come from farther down the valley. They sought cover from that direction. Tarzan held his fire so as not to reveal his position.
The Foreign Legion, hearing the two shots, knew that Tarzan had contacted the enemy. They pushed forward through the trees at the rim of the valley. Jerry was in the lead. Presently he saw a Jap who had taken cover behind a fallen tree. Then he saw another and another. He pointed them out, and the firing commenced. Tarzan also started firing again.
The Japs, cut off in both directions in the narrow valley, without a leader, lacking sufficient intelligence or initiative to act otherwise, blew themselves up with their own grenades.
"They're damned accommodating," said Douglas.
"Nice little guys," said Davis; "trying to save us ammunition."
"I'm goin' down to help 'em out," said Rosetti, "if any of 'em are left alive." He slid and rolled down the steep cliff-side, and Sarina was right behind him.
"There," said Bubonovitch, "is the ideal helpmeet."
CHAPTER 29
Six weeks later the Foreign Legion came down to the coast below Moekemoeko. It had been a strenuous six weeks beset by many hazards. Jap positions in increasing numbers had necessitated many long detours. Only the keen sensibility of the Lord of the Jungle, ranging well ahead of the little company, had saved them from disaster on numerous occasions.
There was a Jap anti-aircraft battery about a kilometer up the coast from where they lay concealed. Between them and the battery was a native village. It was in this village that Sarina expected to find friends who could furnish them a boat and provisions.
"If I had a sarong," she said, "I could walk right into the village in daytime, even if Japs were there; but this outfit might arouse suspicion. I'll have to take a chance, and sneak in after dark."
"Perhaps I can get you a sarong," said Tarzan.
"You will go into the village?" asked Sarina.
"Tonight," replied Tarzan.
"You will probably find sarongs that were washed today and hung out to dry."
After dark Tarzan left them. He moved silently through the stagnant air of the humid, equatorial night. In the camp that he had left that was not a camp but a hiding place, the others spoke in whispers. They were oppressed by the heat and the humidity and the constant sense of lurking danger. When they had been in the mountains they had thought their lot rather miserable. Now they recalled with regret the relative coolness of the higher altitudes.
"I have been in the hills for so long," said Corrie, "that I had almost forgotten how frightful the coast climate can be."
"It is rather rotten," agreed van der Bos.
"Dutchmen must be gluttons for punishment," said Bubonovitch, "to colonize a Turkish bath."
"No," said van der Bos; "we are gluttons for profit. This is a very rich part of the world."
"You can have it," said Rosetti. "I don't want no part of it."
"We wish that the rest of the world felt the same way," said van der Bos.
Tarzan swung into a tree that overlooked the village. A full moon lighted the open spaces. The ornate, native houses cast dense shadows. Natives squatted in the moonlight, smoking and gossiping. Three sarongs hung limp in the dead air from a pole across which they had been thrown to dry. Tarzan settled himself to wait until the people had gone into their houses for the night.
After a while a man entered the kampong from the west. In the bright moonlight, Tarzan could see him plainly. He was a Jap officer, the commanding officer of the anti-aircraft battery a short distance away. When the natives saw him they arose and bowed. He approached them with an arrogant swagger, speaking a few words to a young woman. She arose meekly and followed him into the house that he had commandeered for his own use.
When his back was turned the natives made faces at him, and obscene gestures. Tarzan was content. What he had seen assured him that the natives would be friendly to any enemy of the Japs. After a while the natives went into their houses and silence descended upon the kampong.
Tarzan dropped to the ground and moved into the shadow of a building. He stole silently to a point as near to the sarongs as he could get without coming out into the moonlight. He stood there for a moment listening; then he stepped quickly across the moon drenched space and seized a sarong.
Returning, he had almost reached the shadow when a woman stepped from behind the corner of a building. They met face to face in the moonlight. The woman, startled, opened her mouth to scream. Tarzan seized her and clapped a hand over her parted lips. Then he dragged her into the shadow.
"Quiet!" he commanded in Dutch, "and I will not harm you." He hoped that she understood Dutch. She did.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"A friend," he replied.
"Friends do not steal from us," she said.
"I am only borrowing this sarong. It will be returned. You will not tell the Jap about this? He is my enemy, too."
"I will not tell him. We tell them nothing."
"Good," said Tarzan. "The sarong will be returned tomorrow."
He wheeled and was lost in the shadows. The woman shook her head, and climbed the ladder that gave entrance to her house. She told her family of the adventure that had befallen her.
"You will never see the sarong again," said one.
"For the sarong, I do not care," she replied. "It did not belong to me. But I should like to see the wild man again. He was very beautiful."
The following morning, Sarina entered the village. The first woman she met recognized her, and soon she was surrounded by old friends. She warned them away for fear that there might be Japs in the village who would recognize from their greetings that she must be a newcomer and therefore some one to be investigated. Sarina did not wish to be investigated by any Japs. The villagers understood, and returned to their normal activities. Then Sarina sought out Alauddin Shah, the village chief. He seemed glad to see her, and asked her many questions, most of which she avoided answering until she could determine what his relations were with the Japs.
She soon learned that he hated them. Alauddin Shah was a proud old man, a hereditary chief. The Japs had slapped and kicked him and forced him to bow low even to their enlisted men. Satisfied, Sarina told her story, explained what she and her companions needed, and solicited his aid.
"It will be a hazardous journey," he said. "There are many enemy ships in these waters, and it is a long way to Australia. But if you and your friends wish to risk it, I will help you. There is a large proa hidden in the river a few kilometers down the coast from the village. We will provision it for you, but it will take time. We are not regularly watched; because we have given the Japs no trouble, but they are in and out of the kampong almost every day. One officer sleeps here every night. Everything that we do must be done with the utmost caution."
"If you will leave provisions every day in a house near the edge of the kampong, we will come at night and take them to the proa," Sarina told him. "Thus you can escape blame if we are discovered. You can be very much surprised when you discover that some one has come into the village at night and stolen food."
Alauddin Shah smiled. "You are a true daughter of Big Jon," he said.
A month passed, a month of narrow escapes from detection, a month of harrowed nerves; but at last the proa was provisioned. And now they waited for a moonless night and a favorable wind. Barbed wire and obstructions at the mouth of the stream had been left in place until the proa was ready. Now they had to be removed—a dangerous job in waters infested with crocodiles. But at last even that was accomplished.