looted the paternal treasure at the
Nakodah's suggestion.

Next day passed without alarm; there are only farmhouses and villages,
where a trader need not stop, between Langusan and the Brunei frontier.
The fugitives remained below in the tiny cabin, amidst such heat and such
surroundings that those who know may shudder to think of their situation.
After dark, however, they came up, and, until he fell asleep, doubtless,
Williams heard their murmuring and low happy laughter. On the morrow they
would be safe.

A terrible cry awoke him--screams and trampling on the palm-leaf deck;
then a great splash. Dawn was breaking, but the mists are so dense at that
hour that the Malays call it white darkness. The sounds of struggle and
the girl's wild shrieks directed him; but at the first movement he was
borne backwards and overthrown by a press of men stumbling through the
fog, with Kilian writhing and screaming in their midst. They tossed her
down into the hold and threw themselves upon him, his own servants
foremost. Perhaps these saved him from the fate of poor Nikput. What could
he do?--he had no arms. They swore him to silence. But in that bloody
realm of Brunei to whom should a wise man complain?

All that day and the next Kilian's shrieks never ceased. 'She will go
mad,' Williams cried passionately; the Nakodah smiled. When her raving
clamour was interrupted--died down to silence--they brought her on deck, a
piteous spectacle. I have not to pain myself and my readers by imagining
the contrast with the bright and lovely girl we saw a week ago.

They reached the capital, and Williams fled; of his after life I know only
that he sold some orchids in Singapore. Happily the tale does not end
here.

The crime would have passed unknown or unnoticed, like others innumerable
of its sort in Brunei, had not Kilian avenged her own wrongs. She was
raving mad for a while, but such a prize was worth nursing. Gradually she
recovered her beauty and so much of her wits that the Nakodah sold her for
a great sum to one of the richest nobles. A few days after, perhaps the
same day, she stabbed this man and threw him from a window into the
river--possibly with some distracted recollection of her lover's fate. The
Nakodah was seized and others. All the horrid story came out. They were
executed, and the Sultan restored their victim--quite mad now--to her
father. But on the way she leapt overboard.

[Illustration: CATTLEYA LABIATA. VAR. MEASU