sgressors of the jungle feared and hated. "You would go back to
the Big Bwana, would you? So that is where you have been since you ran
away from me, is it? And who comes now across the river after you--the
Big Bwana?"

"The Swede whom you once chased away from your country when he and his
companion conspired with Nbeeda to steal me from you," replied Meriem.

The Sheik's eyes blazed, and he called his men to approach the shore
and hide among the bushes that they might ambush and annihilate Malbihn
and his party; but Malbihn already had landed and crawling through the
fringe of jungle was at that very moment looking with wide and
incredulous eyes upon the scene being enacted in the street of the
deserted village. He recognized The Sheik the moment his eyes fell
upon him. There were two men in the world that Malbihn feared as he
feared the devil. One was the Big Bwana and the other The Sheik. A
single glance he took at that gaunt, familiar figure and then he turned
tail and scurried back to his canoe calling his followers after him.
And so it happened that the party was well out in the stream before The
Sheik reached the shore, and after a volley and a few parting shots
that were returned from the canoes the Arab called his men off and
securing his prisoner set off toward the South.

One of the bullets from Malbihn's force had struck a black standing in
the village street where he had been left with another to guard Meriem,
and his companions had left him where he had fallen, after
appropriating his apparel and belongings. His was the body that Baynes
had discovered when he had entered the village.

The Sheik and his party had been marching southward along the river
when one of them, dropping out of line to fetch water, had seen Meriem
paddling desperately from the opposite shore. The fellow had called
The Sheik's attention to the strange sight--a white woman alone in
Central Africa and the old Arab had hidden his men in the deserted
village to capture her when she landed, for thoughts of ransom were
always in the mind of The Sheik. More than once before had glittering
gold filtered through his fingers from a similar source. It was easy
money and The Sheik had none too much easy money since the Big Bwana
had so circumscribed the limits of his ancient domain that he dared not
even steal ivory from natives within two hundred miles of the Big
Bwana's douar. And when at last the woman had walked into the trap h