on the edge of a
steep descent which ran down to a broad swamp. It wanted now about
half an hour to sunset. At the foot of the descent, on the edge of the
swamp, a cross had been raised. Jack's blood ran cold within him. What
awful sight were they now to see? Were these monsters about to crucify
the condemned man?

[Illustration: THE RESCUE OF THE NATIVE CHILD.]

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE HORROR IN THE SWAMP.

He breathed more freely when he saw that the men who led the villager
forward had coils of rope in their hands and nothing else. In a trice
the man was bound to the cross, his arms at full length, his body
firmly lashed to the upright.

The half-caste now beckoned to Jack.

"Come down the slope," said Saya Chone. "I want you to look at this
man now. You will see him again in the morning. Perhaps you will find
it useful to note the difference."

Jack was led down the descent and brought face to face with the
native. The English lad saw at once that the man bound to the cross
was stupefied with an extremity of terror. His brown skin was a
frightful ashen shade, his eyes were wide, distended with horror, and
fixed on the swamp, his mouth open, his jaw hanging limp.

"You will see him again in the morning," repeated the half-caste; "and
you will see, I assure you, another kind of man."

"Yes," said Jack, "after you have practised your brutal devilries on
him."

"No, no, oh no," laughed Saya Chone in his soft, cunning tones. "We
shall do no more to him. His whole punishment consists in remaining
here in bonds from sunset to sunrise. Then we shall loose the ropes,
and he will be free."

"Yes," said Jack, who thought now that he saw daylight, "with every
vein full of the fever and malaria that haunt this swamp."

"Fever," laughed Saya Chone, "this fellow is absolutely safe against
fever. You could no more give him jungle fever than you could make him
ten feet high. A night here would give you a fever that would kill you
in ten days, never him."

Jack was puzzled once more, and said nothing. He resolved to ask his
father what it all meant.

But he soon found that this chance was not to be afforded him. He was
led back up the rise, and placed at some distance from the spot where
his father stood. He saw his father taken down the slope and
confronted with the condemned native, then brought back. At once the
procession was reformed. Jack was placed at the head, his father at
the rear, and they were not