gh their handshake had been a signal there came a strange sound
from the jungle behind them.

A burst of laughter that was plainly human--and another sound which
caused the short hair at the base of Bentley's skull to rise, shift
oddly, and settle back again.

The sound was like the beating of a skin-tight drumhead by the fists
of a jungle savage. But if such it was the drum was a mighty drum, and
the savage was a giant, for the sound went rolling through the jungle
like an invisible tidal wave of sound.

Both the laughter and the drumming ceased as suddenly as they had
sounded.

The man and woman laughed jerkily, dropped to the sand side by side
and considered the necessity of clothes.

CHAPTER II

_Into the Jungle_

They had to smile together at the results achieved with the bedraggled
bits of cloth. Bentley suspected that they had been taken from bodies
washed ashore as gruesome reminders of the catastrophe which had
befallen the _Bengal Queen_, and because he did suspect this he did
not ask questions that might cause Ellen to remember any longer than
was necessary. Not that he doubted her courage, for she had proved
that sufficiently; and she had proved that she was sensible, with none
of the notions of the proprieties which would have made any other girl
of Bentley's acquaintance a nuisance.

Their next concern was food, which they must find in the jungle, or
from other wreckage cast ashore from the _Bengal Queen_. Now, hand in
hand--which seemed natural in the circumstances--they began to walk
along the shore, heading into the north by mutual consent.

As they walked Bentley kept pondering on that strange laughter he had
heard and on the sound of savage drumming. The laughter puzzled him.
If there were anyone in the jungle back of them, why had he or they
failed to challenge them?

As for the drumming sound--Bentley remembered what the second officer
had said about this section of the coast. It was a bit of jungle
inhabited by the great apes in large numbers. So, that drumming had
been a challenge, the man-ape's manner of mocking an enemy by beating
himself on his barrel chest with his huge fists. But that the ape had
not been challenging Bentley and the girl Bentley felt quite sure, as
the brute would certainly have shown himself in that case.

They trudged on through the sand, while the sun beat down unmercifully
on their uncovered heads. Ellen Estabrook strode along at Bentley's
side without co