nt it, and the chances were that they all were asleep.

So he explained to the chief the plan that had so suddenly sprung to
his wicked mind.

"Three men with parangs may easily quiet the old man, his assistant and
the Chinaman," he said, "and then we can take the girl along with us."

The chief refused at first, point-blank, to be a party to any such
proceedings. He knew what had happened to the Sakkaran Dyaks after
they had murdered a party of Englishmen, and he did not purpose laying
himself and his tribe open to the vengeance of the white men who came
in many boats and with countless guns and cannon to take a terrible
toll for every drop of white blood spilled.

So it was that Muda Saffir was forced to compromise, and be satisfied
with the chief's assistance in abducting the girl, for it was not so
difficult a matter to convince the head hunter that she really had
belonged to the rajah, and that she had been stolen from him by the old
man and the doctor.

Virginia slept in a room with three Dyak women. It was to this
apartment that the chief finally consented to dispatch two of his
warriors. The men crept noiselessly within the pitch dark interior
until they came to the sleeping form of one of the Dyak women.
Cautiously they awoke her.

"Where is the white girl?" asked one of the men in a low whisper.
"Muda Saffir has sent us for her. Tell her that her father is very
sick and wants her, but do not mention Muda Saffir's name lest she
might not come."

The whispering awakened Virginia and she lay wondering what the cause
of the midnight conference might be, for she recognized that one of the
speakers was a man, and there had been no man in the apartment when she
had gone to sleep earlier in the night.

Presently she heard some one approach her, and a moment later a woman's
voice addressed her; but she could not understand enough of the native
tongue to make out precisely the message the speaker wished to convey.
The words "father," "sick," and "come," however she finally understood
after several repetitions, for she had picked up a smattering of the
Dyak language during her enforced association with the natives.

The moment that the possibilities suggested by these few words dawned
upon her, she sprang to her feet and followed the woman toward the door
of the apartment. Immediately without the two warriors stood upon the
verandah awaiting their victim, and as Virginia passed through the
doorway she was