father the little fellow managed, by a sudden and unexpected effort,
to break away from his captor, and, running up to Gaunt, embraced him,
crying:

"Oh, father, make that cruel man leave me alone; he has been whipping me
and twisting my arm and hurting it so much that I can scarcely use it.
Oh, don't let him touch me again, father," as he saw the Malay
approaching him with a scowl of hideous malignity upon his already
sufficiently ugly features.

"My darling boy, I cannot help you," groaned Gaunt. "Would to God that
I could! but you see they have bound me to this tree so that I cannot
move. Listen, Percy dear; we can do nothing at present but submit to
these men, who have us in their power, so you must just let them do what
they will with you, my precious one; go with the man very quietly, and
then perhaps he will not ill-treat you any more."

"_Must_ I, father?" asked the little fellow tearfully, and looking at
his father in vague surprise at so seemingly heartless a command.

"Yes, dear boy; yes. It is for your own good that I tell you to do
this," answered Gaunt brokenly, for he keenly felt the unspoken reproach
which he saw in the child's eyes as the little fellow forlornly turned
away and with a piteous sob quietly surrendered himself to the brute,
who now again with ruffianly violence seized upon his helpless victim.

"Oh, don't! you hurt me so," the poor little fellow suddenly screamed
out; and the father's heart swelled almost to bursting with impotent
fury as he saw the cruel clutch with which the wretch was digging his
long thin sinewy fingers into the tender flesh of the boy's shoulder as
he forced him toward an adjoining tree, to which he forthwith proceeded
to lash him, drawing the cord so tightly round the slender wrists that
the little fellow fairly screamed and writhed with the intolerable pain.

"Curse you!" yelled Gaunt, now fairly stung to madness and foaming at
the mouth with fury; "curse you, fiend that you are!" And as he hurled
forth words of rage and defiance he tugged and strained with such
superhuman strength upon his bonds that the stout rope fairly cracked
whilst it cut into the flesh of his wrists down to the bone. But the
lashing was too strong to yield to even his frenzied efforts, apart from
the fact that, with his arms lashed behind him, he had no opportunity to
exert his strength effectively, and at length, completely exhausted, he
was fain to desist, to the undisguised delig