ned to wield with fearful effect, clove
through the pursuing warrior's skull splitting him wide to the breast
bone.

Thus they fought the while they forced their way deeper and deeper into
the dark mazes of the entangled vegetation. The brunt of the running
battle was borne by the two monsters, for Bulan was carrying Virginia,
and keeping a little ahead of his companions to insure the girl's
greater safety.

Now and then patches of moonlight filtering through occasional openings
in the leafy roofing revealed to Virginia the battle that was being
waged for possession of her, and once, when Number Three turned toward
her after disposing of a new assailant, she was horrified to see the
grotesque and terrible face of the creature. A moment later she caught
sight of Number Twelve's hideous face. She was appalled.

Could it be that she had been rescued from the Malay to fall into the
hands of creatures equally heartless and entirely without souls? She
glanced up at the face of him who carried her. In the darkness of the
night she had not yet had an opportunity to see the features of the
man, but after a glimpse at those of his two companions she trembled to
think of the hideous thing that might be revealed to her.

Could it be that she had at last fallen into the hands of the dreaded
and terrible Number Thirteen! Instinctively she shrank from contact
with the man in whose arms she had been carried without a trace of
repugnance until the thought obtruded itself that he might be the
creature of her father's mad experimentation, to whose arms she had
been doomed by the insane obsession of her parent.

The man shifted her now to give himself freer use of his right arm, for
the savages were pressing more closely upon Twelve and Three, and the
change made it impossible for the girl to see his face even in the more
frequent moonlit places.

But she could see the two who ran and fought just behind them, and she
shuddered at her inevitable fate. For should the three be successful
in bearing her away from the Dyaks she must face an unknown doom, while
should the natives recapture her there was the terrible Malay into
whose clutches she had already twice fallen.

Now the head hunters were pressing closer, and suddenly, even as the
girl looked directly at him, a spear passed through the heart of Number
Three. Clutching madly at the shaft protruding from his misshapen body
the grotesque thing stumbled on for a dozen paces,