he boats to pick up the trail of the
pirates. We found where several bamboo poles had been cut close to the
dry, rocky bed of an old stream, and the remnants of ropes.

"They cut these poles to pack the sacks away," said Riggs. "Their cache
can't be far away and we'll have to work like cats now."

The old water-course led back into high ground through a canon, and there
were unmistakable signs that the pirates had followed the waterway.
Patches of sand where pools had formed during the rainy season were full
of tracks in both directions, and we knew they had made several trips
from the boats up the canon, and we set out upon the trail.

We let Rajah take the lead this time, for he had a way of getting through
the overhanging branches silently, and his bare feet moved among the
loose stones and sand with as little noise as a snake might make. Bent
nearly double with his kris gripped in his right hand he kept in advance
of us. We might easily have been taken for pirates ourselves as we
skulked along, with our pistols raised, crawling under low bushes,
dodging behind tree-trunks, and peering ahead into the dim places of the
jungle.

In spite of the shade it was hot in that ravine. Labouring under the
excitement of the man-hunt, and suffering from loss of sleep and the
weariness of the siege we had undergone in the steamer, the heat
weakened us.

The bed of the stream, full of dead twigs and loose stones, in places a
succession of steps where there had been cascades in the torrential
little river, was a hard road. It would have been hard enough to
travel with no efforts at caution, but we were forced to pick every step,
and keep bent low or fall flat to avoid a fall and racket.

Captain Riggs made hard going of it, and had to stop every few yards to
regain his breath. Although he made no complaint, I suspected that his
heart was troubling him, for he kept putting his free hand to his side,
and when he got out of breath his face took on a purplish tint.

"I'm afraid I'll have to rest a bit," he whispered to me during one of
these attacks. "I'll be all right in a little while, but I'm too old to
keep up to the pace of you and the black boy there."

He crawled into the brush a few feet and lay down, and I saw he had about
reached the limit of his efforts for the day. He was more exhausted than
I had realized. We called Rajah back, and while Riggs was resting I went
ahead a way, with the idea of watching for the pirates