nia.

"Why does the big white man who leads the ourang outangs follow us?" he
asked. "Is it the chest he desires, or you?"

"It is certainly not the chest," replied the girl. "He wishes to take
me back to my father, that is all. If you will return me to him you
may keep the chest, if that is what you wish."

Ninaka looked at her quizzically for a moment. Evidently then she was
of some value. Possibly should he retain her he could wring a handsome
ransom from the white man. He would wait and see, it were always an
easy matter to rid himself of her should circumstances require. The
river was there, deep, dark and silent, and he could place the
responsibility for her loss upon Muda Saffir.

Shortly after day break Ninaka beached his prahu before the long-house
of a peaceful river tribe. The chest he hid in the underbrush close by
his boat, and with the girl ascended the notched log that led to the
verandah of the structure, which, stretching away for three hundred
yards upon its tall piles, resembled a huge centipede.

The dwellers in the long-house extended every courtesy to Ninaka and
his crew. At the former's request Virginia was hidden away in a dark
sleeping closet in one of the windowless living rooms which opened
along the verandah for the full length of the house. Here a native
girl brought her food and water, sitting, while she ate, in rapt
contemplation of the white skin and golden hair of the strange female.

At about the time that Ninaka pulled his prahu upon the beach before
the long-house, Muda Saffir from the safety of the concealing
underbrush upon the shore saw a familiar war prahu forging rapidly up
the stream. As it approached him he was about to call aloud to those
who manned it, for in the bow he saw a number of his own men; but a
second glance as the boat came opposite him caused him to alter his
intention and drop further into the engulfing verdure, for behind his
men squatted five of the terrible monsters that had wrought such havoc
with his expedition, and in the stern he saw his own Barunda in
friendly converse with the mad white man who had led them.

As the boat disappeared about a bend in the river Rajah Muda Saffir
arose, shaking his fist in the direction it had vanished and, cursing
anew and volubly, damned each separate hair in the heads of the
faithless Barunda and the traitorous Ninaka. Then he resumed his watch
for the friendly prahu, or smaller sampan which he knew tim