ishap could have overtaken her wonderful Korak who daily
passed unscathed through all the terrors of the jungle. Yet morning
came, the morning meal was eaten, the camp broken and the disreputable
safari of the Swedes was on the move northward with still no sign of
the rescue the girl momentarily expected.

All that day they marched, and the next and the next, nor did Korak
even so much as show himself to the patient little waiter moving,
silently and stately, beside her hard captors.

Malbihn remained scowling and angry. He replied to Jenssen's friendly
advances in curt monosyllables. To Meriem he did not speak, but on
several occasions she discovered him glaring at her from beneath half
closed lids--greedily. The look sent a shudder through her. She
hugged Geeka closer to her breast and doubly regretted the knife that
they had taken from her when she was captured by Kovudoo.

It was on the fourth day that Meriem began definitely to give up hope.
Something had happened to Korak. She knew it. He would never come
now, and these men would take her far away. Presently they would kill
her. She would never see her Korak again.

On this day the Swedes rested, for they had marched rapidly and their
men were tired. Malbihn and Jenssen had gone from camp to hunt, taking
different directions. They had been gone about an hour when the door
of Meriem's tent was lifted and Malbihn entered. The look of a beast
was on his face.

Chapter 14

With wide eyes fixed upon him, like a trapped creature horrified
beneath the mesmeric gaze of a great serpent, the girl watched the
approach of the man. Her hands were free, the Swedes having secured
her with a length of ancient slave chain fastened at one end to an iron
collar padlocked about her neck and at the other to a long stake driven
deep into the ground.

Slowly Meriem shrank inch by inch toward the opposite end of the tent.
Malbihn followed her. His hands were extended and his fingers
half-opened--claw-like--to seize her. His lips were parted, and his
breath came quickly, pantingly.

The girl recalled Jenssen's instructions to call him should Malbihn
molest her; but Jenssen had gone into the jungle to hunt. Malbihn had
chosen his time well. Yet she screamed, loud and shrill, once, twice,
a third time, before Malbihn could leap across the tent and throttle
her alarming cries with his brute fingers. Then she fought him, as any
jungle she might fight, with