ng, and the steamy dank
scent of the jungle came to his nostrils.

The next moment fingers touched his cheek, were pressed upon his lips,
touched his breast, and were gone directly; a slight start from Frank
suggesting that he was now being touched. Then followed a faint
rustling, and Frank leaned over, put his lips to Ned's ear, and said:

"The hand touched me, then went down to my waist, and it has taken my
kris. It's a thief. Shall I call for help?"

At that moment he felt his hand seized and tugged. Then again, and it
was drawn under the mat to the opening above their heads.

"It's all right," whispered Frank. "I'm to go first. Snore."

For a few moments the boy did not grasp his friend's meaning, but the
idea came, and he commenced breathing hard, and uttered a faint sigh in
his agony; for just in the midst of the rustling sound close by him,
caused as he knew from a touch by Frank gliding slowly through the
opening as if being drawn, he saw a gleam of light beneath the matting
at the doorway, and felt that some one was coming again with the
lantern.

The difficulty now was to make a noise that should sound natural. If he
snored loudly it might seem forced, and if he did not, he felt sure that
the rustling, scraping sound would be heard. But fortune favoured him.

Just as he was in despair, there was the sharp _ping_-_wing_ of a
mosquito, and he babbled out something incoherently, made a restless
movement, and slapped his face quickly twice, as he had often done
before in an attempt to slay one of the noxious little insects.

The light disappeared directly, for the listening Malay was satisfied;
and as Ned stretched out his hand again, he found that he was alone.

There was a terrible pause now, and in these brief moments the boy began
to think that he had been forsaken, when all at once the hand touched
him, glided down to his waist, and drew at it firmly.

He yielded and tried to force himself along, but did little, and that
little seemed unnecessary, for strong muscles were at work, and he was
almost entirely drawn through the opening till he was quite out; his
legs sank down gently, and he was lowered till he felt his feet touch
the ground, and a hand which he knew directly for Frank's, lay on his
lips.

As he was puzzling himself as to how it had been managed, he grasped the
fact that some one was gliding down the smooth trunk of a palm-tree
which grew close to the house, and to which one o