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Based on an antique Javanese print
Blue Book, September 1934, with "Jungle Woman"
James Francis Dwyer
JAMES FRANCIS DWYER (1874-1952) was an Australian writer. Born in Camden Park, New South Wales, Dwyer worked as a postal assistant until he was convicted in a scheme to make fraudulent postal orders and sentenced to seven years imprisonment in 1899. In prison, Dwyer began writing, and with the help of another inmate and a prison guard, had his work published in The Bulletin. After completing his sentence, he relocated to London and then New York, where he established a successful career as a writer of short stories and novels. Dwyer later moved to France, where he wrote his autobiography, Leg-Irons on Wings, in 1949. Dwyer wrote over 1,000 short stories during his career, and was the first Australian-born person to become a millionaire from writing. —Wikipedia
THE keen blue eyes of Jan Kromhout were fixed upon a shadow-patch thrown by a small fan-palm that stood some fifteen feet from the veranda of his bungalow. The big Dutch naturalist was interested in the nearly imperceptible movement of the mass of dry leaves upon the ground. His body was tense; there was about him the look of a person ready to spring. In the silence of the afternoon there came from the bungalow the slurring sound made by the scores of lizards and snakes that were Kromhout's captives.
"What is there?" I asked irritably. The curious alertness of the Dutchman's body was upsetting to the nerves of a watcher.
"Under those leaves is the wife of the Chlamydosaurus that I brought home this morning," he whispered. "Ja. I am sure that she is there. She is looking for him."
I recalled the capture of the morning. A huge lizard with a frill-like fold of the skin around the neck, which, when erected, made one think of an Elizabethan ruff. A most repulsive fellow. Kromhout was delighted with him because, unlike the agamoids to which he belonged, the lizard was marked with two distinct lines of yellow spots along his sides, lines which the naturalist described as "handsome."
For ten minutes we remained silent, the gaze of Kromhout centered on the pile of dead leaves; then the slight movement ceased, and Kromhout relaxed.
"I think she has gone away," he said quietly. "She was afraid to come closer. Perhaps he managed to let her know it would do no good."
I grinned. "Do you think he could tell her he was in a specimen case that she couldn't open?" I asked.
"He might," snapped the naturalist. "He has told her where he is, and that is something. It is quite some distance from the place where I caught him, On the way from there to here he has left messages. Some odor of fear that she has followed. Fear and temper. It was easy for her."
Silence fell upon us. The naturalist pulled at his meerschaum, his immense body loose in the cane chair, his bare arms laid upon the specially woven rests that, besides supporting the forearms, had cunningly plaited receptacles to hold beer-bottles and glasses. I pondered over the fidelity of the female Chlamydosaurus. It was evident that she liked the horror who was a prisoner in the bungalow.
"I have never married," said Kromhout, breaking the silence. "I have never found a woman who wanted me very greatly—never. When I was young, I would walk down the Kalver-Straat and the Leidsche Plein in Amsterdam, but no girls looked at me as if their life depended on getting me. Nee, they did not. Even the ugly ones thought they could do better. There were old Dutchmen who had money, and who did not mind how ugly a girl was, if she was young and plump. There is nothing like that in the animal world. I mean no bidding with gold. There is only desire, and matters are arranged very well with desire. Very well indeed.
"LISTEN—I will tell you a story. It might interest you.
Five years ago a friend of mine introduced me to a young
Engelsman who wished to go into the jungle. My friend asked me to take him along. I agreed.
"If you could think of a splendid god, you would be able to picture that boy. He was twenty-two years of age; he was six feet in height; and he was built like the Adonis of Bossuit that is in the Rijks Museum. Ja, he was built fine. He had broad shoulders and chest; then he tapered down to narrow hips and long muscular legs. And his face was the face of a nice boy, all smiles; and he had hair that looked like light-colored gold—the gold that you see in Australian sovereigns.
"It is funny about the English: They grow up slowly. So slowly! Their young men of twenty-five are so nice and innocent. What you would call clean, eh? I think it is the fog that rolls over their damned little island and keeps their passions from boiling. Yes, I think it is the fog.
"This boy—his name was Featherstone—did not think of women. Not one bit. He thought only of horses. It was curious. He carried with him a bundle of photographs, and they were all pictures of horses. When I first saw that bundle, I thought they would be pictures of women, but they were not. They were horses—some that his father had owned, and some others that had won races; and wherever we camped he would put those pictures on the walls of the hut. And he would talk about those horses till he made me sick. Telling me how they could run, and how they could jump, till I was nearly crazy from listening. There are lots of Engelsen like that. They think as much of a horse as a naturalist would think of the finest specimen that came into his hands.
"This boy came from a place in England where they chase the fox. A place with a funny name—Melting Mowbray, is it not?"
"Melton Mowbray, in Leicestershire," I remarked. "Fox-hunting center."
"That is the place—Melton Mowbray. Once his people were big nobs in that place, but they had got poor—poor as the canal rats on the Oude-Schans. That was why this boy had come to the Orient. He had dreams of treasure. Big dreams! He thought that somewhere or other he would fall upon a heap of rubies and diamonds and pearls, and that he would go back to that place, Melton Mowbray, and buy horses and build stables. Buy horses and build stables! Would you believe it? No interest in anything else.
"He made me laugh a lot with his talk. 'I would buy some fine stock if I found treasure,' he would say. 'Good mares, y'know. I might breed the winner of the Derby! What?'
"He would always say 'Y'know' and 'What?' after everything. It was his way. Sometimes I would get mad with him. 'What the devil would you get from winning this fool race that you call the Derby?' I would snap at him. 'What pleasure for you?' And when I would ask him that he would nearly faint with astonishment. 'What pleasure?' he would gasp. 'Oh, Mr. Kromhout, you do not understand! Why, it's the Derby! Why—why, it's the great ambition of every true Englishman who owns horses! Why, the man who owns the winner is taken immediately before His Majesty the King! The King shakes hands with him!' And then he would choke, because of my stupidity, and he would get so red in the face that he would have to drink two or three whiskies quick. He was very polite to me, but I think that he thought me an old Dutch cheese-head for not understanding the pleasure that the horse-owner would get from shaking the hand of the King.
"WE were camped then at a place about two miles from the ruins
of a big Buddhist temple. We had a Javanese woman to do things
for us, and that woman had a daughter, Ja, she had a
daughter. She was seventeen, was that girl, and she had a beauty
that made you cry when you looked at her. Made you cry because
you knew how quickly that beauty would slip away from her and
leave her an ugly witch like her mother. They bloom so early in
the Orient. It is sad. One day they are little children, and the
next day they are hags. But for a little while—a month, a
week, perhaps only a day—they have a splendor that smashes
you to the ground.
"THAT girl was tall and slim. Her skin was the color of copper
in the sunlight, and her eyes were a million miles deep. Her hair
shone like the crow's wing; her lips were the red of the
hibiscus, and her teeth made you wish that she was a cannibal and
that you were her dinner. That is so.
"Her name was Nara, and the moment she saw Featherstone, she knew that those dreams that were inside her head were not there for nothing. She thought him a god that had been sent to her. She could see nothing but that damned long Englsman, and she watched him with her big soft eyes, thinking he would see her. But he did not see her at all! It was strange. He was thinking of treasure, and horses, and stables, and that fool race which if you win it you can touch the hand of the King.
"That girl played a trick to get him to notice her beauty. Featherstone went down to the river one hot morning, and Nara was standing in the middle of the pool that he thought was his special bathing-place. The sun was flashing on her red-brown body, and she had her arms held high like a goddess. Held high to welcome that young man!
"Featherstone turned on his heel and came back quick to the bungalow. His face was red, and he was very angry. 'Got to stop that sort of stuff, Mr. Kromhout!' he cried. 'Won't wash, y'know! Got to tell her! What?'
"'Tell her yourself!' I snapped, and I was a little mad with him. I did not stop to think that although he was much older than Nara, he was just a little boy, he being an Engelsman. He would be quite young at thirty-five, and Nara would be a wrinkled hag. He would still be chasing the foxes when she would be dead for years and years. It is sad to think that it is so.
"Featherstone spoke to the girl when she came to the bungalow. I watched her as she listened to him. She had a blue sarong drawn tight around her hips; and as he spoke, she quivered like an arrow that has struck a tree. Ja, she looked strange. Strange and beautiful.
"He told her that it was not cricket to swim in that pool with nothing on. Everything that young Engelsman thought wrong, he would say it wasn't cricket. I got sick of hearing of that game. So did that girl when he was stammering and spluttering trying to make her understand—and she quivering in front of him with that blue sarong so tight around her hips. She was more alive than anything I have ever seen. There was the very ripple of life in her, the ripple that you see in the movements of a panther or a serpent. It was her hour—her hour.
"NEXT day there was trouble—plenty of it! One of the
photographs on the wall was that of a horse named Spion Kop. I
remember his name because it is a Dutch name. He had won that
Derby race, and the boy thought a lot of his picture. He would
look at that horse every morning and every evening, and he would
drool at the mouth thinking that one day he would breed a horse
like this Spion Kop and get his hand shook by the King.
"I thought it funny, but it was his business. Well, the evening after he lectured the girl about swimming with nothing on, he went to look at that horse. Do you know what had happened? That horse when he was photographed was looking right at the camera so that you could see his two eyes; but when Featherstone looked at him that evening he had no eyes. No eyes at all. They had been scratched out, and there were only two holes.
"Do you think that Engelsman got in a temper? He did. He got in a terrible temper. And he was so innocent about women that he did not guess who did it. First he thought it was one of the two boys that I had to look after the specimens; then he thought it was the old woman. It was only when they swore they knew nothing about the eyes of the horse, that he thought of the girl.
"'It might be Nara, Mr. Kromhout?' he said, as if he was saying something unbelievable. 'But why would she do it?
"He was so much like a baby that he made me laugh. 'I do not know,' I said. 'Why don't you ask her?'
"He sent a boy to find that girl, but she could not be found. No one had seen her. And Featherstone got madder and madder, and drank whisky and cursed the jungle and the Malays and everyone in it. He was a little lonely, and he was upset because he was in a country where a person would scratch the eyes out of a horse picture.
"'A thing like that, Mr. Kromhout, could not happen in England!' he would say, over and over again. And I would nod my head, knowing that it would not, because the fog that rolls over England keeps down the passion and jealousy that I knew was in the breast of that girl who had gone and hid herself after dealing with that horse Spion Kop. Things blaze in the Malay; they just smolder in England.
"Next evening when we came in from trapping things, another of those horses had lost an eye. There was only one eye, because he was taken sideways, but that eye was not there. In its place was a red flower that is called the love-flower. Featherstone did not know it was called that name, and I did not tell him. I could not tell him if I wished to, because he got in such a temper. And the whisky that he drank did not do him any good.
"Next morning he was sulky. He said he was going to stay in the bungalow and watch those horse pictures. It was no use speaking to him. He laid himself down on a stretcher with the bottle of whisky at his side, and I left him and went off into the jungle. He was—Wait! The wife of that Chlamydosaurus is back under those leaves!"
THE naturalist gripped the arm-rests of his chair and pulled himself half erect, his eyes on the dead leaves. From within the bungalow there came the peculiar cricket-like noise made by a gecko rubbing his imbricating scales against each other, and this sound disturbed the lizard in the leaves. There was a scurry of feet, then silence. Kromhout dropped back into his seat.
"On the day that I left him in the hut watching those silly horse pictures," continued the naturalist, "there was a pretty big prisoner in a shed at the back of the hut. It was a female python. She was in a crate, and I was waiting for a man to come along and take her off my hands. She was not a nice snake. I would watch her and wonder what charm she would have for a male python. She was as ugly as a big snake could be, and that is a lot. Her temper was always at boiling-point. She did not like being caged up, and she was trying to tell the whole island that she did not like it.
"It was dark when I got back that evening. When I came down the path to the hut, I called out to Featherstone. He did not answer, and there was no light. The door of the hut was open, and the place was very quiet.
"I had a flashlight, and I stood at the door and turned it on the one room in which we slept and ate and kept small specimens. Featherstone was on the stretcher, dead drunk; and the floor was covered with broken specimen-cases and broken bottles—and fifteen feet of snake. Ja. Dead snake. There had been a fight in that room that I would like to have seen. No, that is wrong. I would not have liked that fight. It would have made me a little ill.
"AT first I thought the dead snake on the floor was the female
python we had in the shed, but when I heard her threshing around
in her cage, I knew it was another. I guessed it was the husband
of that lady snake who had followed her, looking for a fight with
the person who had kidnaped her. And he had got that fight.
Ja, plenty of it.
"The head of that fellow had been chopped off neatly with a stroke of a parang, but his body looked as if he had taken some punishment before he lost that ugly head of his. And those broken bottles and specimen-cases showed that he had made a fight of it.
"I found a lamp that was not broken and I tried to rouse that Engelsman. It was some work. He was very drunk. I got some water and tossed it in his face, and after a long while he opened his eyes and looked at me.
"'What the devil has happened here?' I asked him. 'Could you not have killed this snake without smashing every bottle and case in the room?'
"'What snake, Mr. Kromhout?' he asked.
"I was puzzled by his question of, 'What snake?' so I grabbed him by the collar and pulled him up so that he could see. 'Look!' I cried. 'Is it you that has made this fight, or was it some one else?'
"That boy looked at the length of snake, and the parang lying beside the chopped-off head, and he made funny sounds with his mouth. That sight sobered him quick. You bet it did. His voice was just a whisper when he spoke.
"'It wasn't I, Mr. Kromhout!' he gasped. 'I have been asleep! Is it the python in the crate?'
"'No,' I said, 'it is a sweetheart of hers. But who the devil fought him?'
"'I don't know!' stammered Featherstone. 'I am afraid that I drank a little too much, y'know! Got lonely and all that. Pipped. What?'
"I went out of the back door of the hut, and I called the names of the two boys, but I got no answer. Then as I stood there, I heard some one sobbing in the darkness of the trees. I turned the flashlight on the spot and I found Nara. Her nerves had been good enough for the fight with that big snake, but after it was over, she felt a little upset. And I did not wonder. It was a great fight.
IN a whisper she told me what had happened. She had prowled around thinking that Featherstone, whom she saw was drunk, might try to light a lamp and get burned to death; and while she was peeping, that snake had arrived to see who was keeping his wife a prisoner. Then the fight had started.
"I took her hand and led her into the hut. 'Here is the winner,' I said to Featherstone. 'It was Nara who finished Mynheer Python.'
"You would think that the Engelsman would be upset, would you not? You would think he would show emotion? Of course you would. Those Engelsen are funny. They are cold—very cold. Featherstone thanked the girl as if she had done some little favor for him; then he said: 'Because you put up such a good fight, Nara, I am not going to say anything about the damage you did to my horse pictures; we'll just forget it. But don't touch any more of them, or I'll get frightfully angry.'
"I was mad with him, but the girl was pleased that he had noticed her. So pleased! Her kabaya had been torn off her bosom, and her sarong was in shreds because she had to jump and leap a lot to dodge the lunges of that snake; and through the holes in her clothes her copper skin shone in the light of the lamp, but Featherstone did not see how beautiful she looked. He was examining the pictures of those horses, wiping off a few specks of snake-blood that had spattered on them during the fight.
"That business of the python did not make Featherstone love the jungle better than he did. Nee. He wanted to go home, but he did not wish to go home with nothing in his hands. So all day long he would prowl about the ruins of that old Buddhist temple, thinking he would find something precious that he might spend on horses and stables.
"'If I found something big, Mr. Kromhout, I would build up one of the best studs in England,' he would say. 'Go in for the game in a big way, y'know.' And he would sing songs about horses. Lots of songs. One of them went like this:
'Give me a horse that is gallant and bold,
And I crave not fair ladies, red wine or bright
gold—'
"He was sure that there was treasure in that old temple. The natives told him stories, and he listened to them. Lots of stories. There is that tale about the Emerald Buddha. You have heard it? It is supposed by some to be buried at Angkor; others think it might be in the Buddhist temples of Alara or Ajunta in India; and there are some who think it is buried in the big temple of Tjandi Boroboedoer that Sir Stamford Raffles excavated when the English held Java. But this Featherstone got it into his head that the Emerald Buddha was hidden in the ruins near our camp. Every night he dreamed of finding it there. Sometimes he would cry out in his dreams and would wake me up. The desire to own those horses and stables was big. Ja, very big.
"UNDER that temple there were tunnels—dark wet places.
Featherstone would crawl into them looking for treasure. It was
foolish. Very foolish. 'One day,' I said to him, 'a snake will
meet you in those tunnels, and you will get nipped.' But he would
only laugh. The desire to get back to England pushed all fear out
of his mind.
"One evening that fool did not return. It was dark, and it was raining. I had a feeling that something had happened—something bad. I felt a little sick. He was a fool, and he was in my care.
"I got the two boys and got some lanterns. Nara wished to come along. She was crying. She thought that Featherstone was dead.
"The boys did not like to go near that old temple at night, and I did not blame them. It was not a nice place. It was full of bats, and the big brothers of the bats, the kalongs of Java, Pteropus edulis, who are a foot long and have an expanse of wing-membrane of more than five feet. When one of those filthy kalongs touched the boys with his wings the boys would squeal, and I would squeal some myself. I do not like those fox-bats. They have an odor that makes me sick.
"And there were carvings in that temple that were a little frightening when you flashed a lantern on them. Gods with nine heads, and goddesses with twenty hands each holding a lotus-flower. I said some bad words about that Engelsman as I stumbled along shouting his name. And each time I shouted his name, the bats would fly out in swarms and bump against our heads.
"It was too much for those boys. A fox-bat knocked a lantern from the hand of one of them, and they let out a squeal and took to their heels. I was left alone there with Nara to look for that idiot who did nothing but dream of horses....
"It was that girl who heard him. She had sharp ears. She clutched my arm and made me listen. At first I could hear nothing; then from under my feet I heard a faint tapping that made my hair stand on end. I knew then. That fool had crept in through one of the tunnels under the floor of the temple, and the earth had fallen in and trapped him! That was what had happened. Nara and I crawled around to the side of the temple, and we saw that tunnel. The roof had caved in on account of the heavy rain, and tons of earth had crashed down. And somewhere on the other side of that dirt and stones was Featherstone!
"I saw that it was work for twenty men. I sat down and cried. And Nara cried; and as she cried, she tore at the stones and the earth with her bare hands. Tore at the stuff till her hands were bleeding. And the rain poured down on us without stopping for a minute.
"There was a village about two miles from that temple, but I did not think I could get anyone to come and dig at that temple in the night. That girl thought different. 'There is one that will come if I want him,' she sobbed. 'And he is so strong that he will make others come.'
"In the light of the lantern she stood up before me. Her wet sarong was gummed to her body so that her flesh shone through it. And her eyes were big and frightening. And her black hair fell down over her bosom to her waist. She looked like the paintings of Rashodara who was the wife of Buddha. I was a little afraid of her at that moment.
"I knew the man that she thought of bringing—knew him well. He was a devil named Hulp—a cross-breed who had been in trouble with the police a score of times. He was the biggest and the strongest man I have ever seen, and he feared nothing. Nothing at all. He was a demon.
"'He will come!' cried Nara. 'He will come for me! And he will bring others. He will beat them if they do not come! Wait, I will be back soon!' And when she said that, she plunged into the night, leaving me there to scratch away at the mud and the stones that were between me and that Engelsman.
"In my brain was a picture of that girl as she had stood in the light of the lantern. I had a vision of her running through the night to the village. I could see her knocking at the door of the hut where that devil of a cross-breed lived, and him looking at her in the light of a lamp as I looked at her. Looking at her black hair, her big eyes, and her copper-red flesh that glowed as if it was on fire. And I swore as I scratched away at the mud. Ja, I swore. Because I knew that Nara was too good for that brute Hulp. I knew that. She loved the Engelsman, but she did not like Hulp. Yet the crossbreed was the only man who would come out in the night! The only one who could make others come!
"She must have run all the way to that village. And she must have made those men run all the way from the village to the old temple. I heard them when they were half a mile away—heard them above the noise of the rain. Hulp was shouting at the top of his voice. Shouting to make them run swifter.
"That big brute was driving ten men before him. Ten men who feared his fists more than they feared the devils of the night. And he cursed them and beat them as he drove them to the work of shoveling that dirt and mud from the tunnel. He was a madman. He shouted and swore so that the temple echoed with his yells; and when he was not kicking the men, he would stand alongside Nara and look at her copper-red body and sing. Sing like the crazy devil that he was!
"I was sick with that business. I went back into the temple to the place where I had heard the tapping, but it was very faint. Then it stopped altogether. I was frightened for Featherstone. I knew that the air in there was bad, and if we did not get to him quick, it would be just work for nothing. I told Nara, and she spoke to Hulp, and that devil fell on his men and kicked them. Perhaps that girl had told him that he would get no reward if the Engelsman was pulled out dead. I do not know. I think she had.
IT was dawn when that stuff was cleared away. Two men crawled
in through the hole and pulled Featherstone out. He was
unconscious. For a few minutes I thought that all the labor had
been for nothing, but after I had worked on him for a little
while, he opened his eyes, and we carried him down to the hut.
Nara was sobbing, and that big brute of a cross-breed had his
arms around her, kissing away her tears.
"That boy was very sick for a week, and when he was well enough, I told him of the rescue. Told him how Nara had run all the way to the village and had brought back Hulp and ten men that Hulp drove before him like dogs. He was touched. Ja, he cried.
"Some letters had come for him while he was sick, and I gave them to him after I had told him the story of the rescue. There was one letter with big red seals on it; and when he read it, he gave a little yelp of surprise.
"'What is it?' I asked.
"'Oh, Mr. Kromhout, this is wonderful!' he cried. 'I—I will have the stud farm after all! My—my uncle Sir Caradoc Featherstone has died, and left me one hundred thousand pounds!'
"It was there in that letter. The lawyers in London had written it. One hundred thousand pounds! A lot of fine money. Twelve hundred thousand guilders! It made me hot.
"He was a good boy. A very good boy. He had a little talk with Nara. He asked her if ten thousand guilders would be nice. She said it would, and she told him that Hulp was not so bad as she thought him at first. Not quite so bad. So the Java Bank arranged that matter, and Nara and that devil Hulp got married and bought a little plantation and were quite happy."
"AND Featherstone?" I asked, as Kromhout's gaze went to the
dead leaves beneath the fan-palm.
"On the boat that took him home to England, there was the daughter of an English general," said the naturalist. "She had on the boat two horses. She wanted carrots for those horses, and Featherstone stole them from the kitchen and gave them to her. You can understand? Featherstone loved her because she loved horses, and she loved Featherstone because he stole the carrots to give to her horses. That is the way Engelsen fall in love. It is funny. They—"
Jan Kromhout was on his feet. With a lightness that surprised me, he stepped from the veranda and covered the distance that separated him from the mass of dead leaves beneath the fan-palm. He made a quick thrust with a forked stick, and a moment later he held up a wriggling lizard whose Elizabethan frill was erect as she struggled vainly to escape from the grip of the naturalist.
"It is his wife," said Kromhout quietly. "I will put her with him. The jungle is lonely for her. They have some things in common to talk about. She is pretty, is she not?"
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