hut but a proper palace, with a
stockade and towers and flagpoles all complete and every blessed thing
about it snaffled off some ship or other.

He saw strakes, beams, keelsons, masts, rigging, and cabin doors enough
to build a fleet with; and the windows were ports and the chimneys all
funnels. The women were cooking dinner in pots made of ship's bells
turned upside, and they were dressed in yards and yards of Chinese silks
all watered impromptu by sea water, and lace curtains from some
captain's berth and various other flotsam while the little children
toddled around in American flour bags. Yes, those Allos could wear
plenty of garments when they were home, which was good manners, but more
particular indicated they'd collected so much wealth they didn't know
what else to do with it.

There were two great carven figureheads guarding
the gate, and Andrew Harben even saw the name under one of them, a most
calm and beautiful white face looking down on this rascal crew. _Witch
of Dundee_ it said. And where was the _Witch of Dundee_ now, and where
all the hearty men which sailed with her? Gone down in Macassar long
since. Here were her bones, what was left, and for theirs the monkeys
would be rolling them on the mud flats at low tide....

Well, Andrew Harben saw these things and he understood quick enough that
the kindly Bugis were no more than wreck pirates who drove a rich trade
whenever for any good and sufficient reason the light failed. They must
have been at it for years, very quiet and cautious so the keepers would
have plenty of time to go mad and get eaten by the crocodile, as the
skipper said. Of course they would not kill the keepers in any uncrafty
way lest the news should get out and spoil their graft, and a white man
with a spear through him is hard to keep secret underground in any
native country.

However, they would have made an exception of Andrew Harben. They spied
him standing there in the dusk, and they knew their game was up unless
they nailed him. They chased him hard through the swamps, but he gave
them the slip and reached home a jump ahead. They were not anxious to
follow while he could sweep the bridge with his fowling piece and so
they stood on the shore and howled.

"Ya--ya!" they said, meaning damn him.

Andrew Harben was the angry man. He'd been pretty much fed up with
natural history by this time. About everything that flew or crawled in
Borneo had sampled him, and he was bit and stun