es. We have said the banks, but in truth the mouth of that
river had no distinguishable banks at all, for it is the nature of the
mangrove to grow in the water--using its roots as legs with which, as it
were, to wade away from shore. When darkness fell suddenly on the
landscape, as it is prone to do in tropical regions, the gnarled roots
of those mangroves assumed the appearance of twining snakes in Nigel's
eyes. Possessing a strongly imaginative mind he could with difficulty
resist the belief that he saw them moving slimily about in the black
water, and, in the dim mysterious light, tree-stems and other objects
assumed the appearance of hideous living forms, so that he was enabled
to indulge the uncomfortable fancy that they were traversing some
terrestrial Styx into one of Dante's regions of horror.

In some respects this was not altogether a fancy, for they were
unwittingly drawing near to a band of human beings whose purposes, if
fully carried out, would render the earth little better than a hell to
many of their countrymen.

It is pretty well-known that there is a class of men in Borneo called
Head Hunters. These men hold the extraordinary and gruesome opinion
that a youth has not attained to respectable manhood until he has taken
the life of some human being.

There are two distinct classes of Dyaks--those who inhabit the hills and
those who dwell on the sea-coast. It is the latter who recruit the
ranks of the pirates of those eastern seas, and it was to the camp of a
band of such villains that our adventurers were, as already said,
unwittingly drawing near.

They came upon them at a bend of the dark river beyond which point the
mangroves gave place to other trees--but what sort of trees they were it
was scarcely light enough to make out very distinctly, except in the
case of the particular tree in front of which the Dyaks were encamped,
the roots of which were strongly illuminated by their camp fire. We say
_roots_ advisedly, for this singular and gigantic tree started its
branches from a complexity of aerial roots which themselves formed a
pyramid some sixty feet high, before the branches proper of the tree
began.

If our voyagers had used oars the sharp ears of the pirates would have
instantly detected them.

As it was, the softly moving paddles and the sharp cutwater of the canoe
made no noise whatever. The instant that Van der Kemp, from his
position in the bow, observed the camp, he dipped his