Everybody's Magazine/Khilit

by Murray Leinster

A Very Unusual Novelette of the
Malaysian Jungle, In Which Appear
a Girl, and a Gentleman—and
Glover, Who Was Merely a Man

 

Khilit

By Murray Leinster

The moral of this story is that virtue is its own reward, and it should never be printed because it seems to prove that right and justice and worthy young men do not always triumph in this world. Or maybe it proves something else. The ending, at any rate, shows conclusively that something depressing is demonstrated. Turn back to—no. Here's the ending.

When Glover sank to cadging drinks in Singapore, of course he was finished. In Singapore, you understand, a man may be not only down and out, but through. Glover was through when even Gow Lee would not stake him any longer. And after the affair up Khilit way Gow Lee spread out his hands indifferently. If for a moment Gow Lee's eyes raged, his face did not change, nor did his speech. He simply would never again use Captain Glover for any of the gun-runnings, smugglings, or assorted illicit enterprises he might have on hand. And since Gow Lee was the last man who had any use for Glover, when Gow Lee deserted him he was finished. For a sample, well ... One night he was cadging drinks in Ryan's place in Singapore—where surely men are not particular—and somebody brought the second mate of the Camden Town over to him.

“Are you the man they call Captain Bill Glover?” asked the second mate coldly. He had only had a couple of drinks, and he looked spruce and trim and very fresh-cheeked and wholesome—even in Ryan's place in Singapore. “Are you the man they call Captain Bill Glover?” he demanded again. “Were you up Khilit way a couple of months ago?”

Glover looked up scowling from where he sat by a glass that somebody else had paid for. Never humble, Glover, even when he was cadging drinks. He'd frown and scowl as he asked for them. But somehow people gave them to him.

“Yes,” he snapped, scowling. “What of it?”

“You lousy, rotten bum!” yelled the second mate of the Camden Town, doubling his fists and swinging with an unholy joy at Glover's face. “Billups was on my ship and I've been hoping to meet you just to bash your damned face in!”

His fist grazed Glover's skull. Glover had dodged from pure instinct. Then he stood up and on the instant was cold sober. And he beat the second mate of the Camden Town until two men had to carry him down to the boat landing, to be put on board. And then he sat down again, with people looking at him queerly, and finished his drink, and presently was cadging them again.

That is not a nice ending for any story, because it is depressing. And besides, it seems to prove that right and justice and praiseworthy young men do not always triumph in this world. The second mate was praiseworthy, and Glover was not. And right and justice were undoubtedly far from Glover's side in the whole affair. This story should not be printed at all, because of its depressing moral. Consider:

II

The first of the rains struck after the canoes had been hauled out and turned bottom up in the jungle. The men were half a mile along the jungle path when far off and far away a dull, booming roar set up. It drew nearer and grew louder. There was a racing patter-pitter-pattering sound running ahead of the drumming roar. It swept close, and suddenly there were huge, widely spaced warm raindrops falling all about. It swept past and the roaring noise came booming on, growing louder and louder until it drowned out every other noise in the world. Then the rain fell.

It poured down in sheets, in cataracts, in solid masses. In seconds, every living thing within the jungle was dripping wet. The great green leaves of the noisome things that grow rankly toward the sky thrust themselves out eagerly to drink in the moisture. The long lianas uncoiled fresh green tendrils in the saturating rain. Moulds and fungi sprouted and waxed monstrous almost while one watched. The creeping and crawling things slithered stickily through the trash upon the ground, making for their holes. The four-footed animals grew soaked and unhappy. The gray monkeys gathered in shivering, querulous groups in the treetops. And over all, and through all, and drowning out all other possible sounds, was the steady, monotonous, unvarying drumming of the rain upon the jungle.

Glover pushed himself savagely along a jungle path that was better than most, in that it was only necessary to use a golok—a wood knife—once in three or four minutes to clear the way. Behind him trailed the men Gow Lee had assigned him. Suchin Chinese, mostly. The man who brought up the rear was a gigantic specimen, of a vastly different breed from the small and wispy Cantonese who iron the shirts and collars of the Occident. Su Yang and all his followers had learned their trade as river pirates on the Kang-Tze and they were not, let us say, reassuring companions to the meek and lowly. But Glover was not exactly meek.

The rain poured down. It was not possible to see ten yards ahead because of the falling water. It was not possible to keep one inch of skin dry, bcause of the spouting streams from the foliage overhead. And it seemed that upon every projecting leaf along the way there were small and squirming objects waiting for a living thing to touch them that they might fasten upon something with warm blood and wax gorged and fat.

A man stumbled and went down with a crash. He got up again with water pouring off him and little wriggling things settling on his bare flesh. He plucked them off sullenly and went on. Su Yang rumbled a curse at him. Glover scowled and went on.

The smell of wood smoke, damp and choking. A sudden clearing and a little whistle, with naked figures plunging headlong through the rain for the jungle's edge. Crude, uncomfortable shacks of the most temporary possible sort, reeking with wood smoke and crawling with lice. Deserted. Empty. The fires smoldering smokily. The floor logs still warm from bodies that had been lying upon them.

Glover waved his hand.

“We camp,” he growled, and crawled into a windowless hut and essayed to warm himself beside its reeking fire.

He heard the clacking talk of his followers and scowled more deeply at unpleasant laughter from them. This was a Sakai village, inhabited by those timid jungle folk who are the true aborigines of Malaysia and are hunted by the Malays for the gétah and other jungle produce they sometimes manage to acquire. Glover's followers had found a store of lumps of gétah, which is gutta-percha and worth acquiring, and they were discussing its division among themselves.

Glover's scowl at overhearing them was not due to exalted notions of ethics—his past record was proof of that—but to a sort of scorn. The Sakai are notoriously timid. They flee to cover at the first sign of any stranger. They had fled at the mere approach of Glover and his men. And Glover despised weaklings too much to rob them.

The smoke strangled him in the filthy hut. The fire but insufficiently warmed him. The monotonous booming drumming of the rain filled all the air. He waited for food to be brought him. He ate it distastefully when it came. He smoked And he was annoyed when Su Yang crawled through, the entrance of the hut to speak to him.

“Well?” said Glover sourly.

“We catch 'em missionary station maybe one hour, maybe two,” Su Yang informed him. He regarded Glover unpleasantly. There were times when it galled him to be under the orders of any other man, and especially a white man. “Gow Lee told me tell you don't try fool gentleman chop.”

Glover's scowl grew deeper.

“Don't try the gentleman stuff, eh?” he demanded. “Now, what in bloody hell made Gow Lee get that idea in his head?”

Su Yang shrugged with something of insolence.

“Pu chih tao?” Then he grinned unpleasantly. “Gow Lee says you were gentleman once. Maybe you break out gentleman again. And he says kill you if you do.”

“Ah!” said Glover coldly. “So I was a gentleman once, and I'm to be killed if I turn gentleman again, eh?”

Su Yang nodded, regarding him with insolent almond eyes. His hand tucked itself in the sash about his waist, handily close to a long knife stuck there. Su Yang's revolver was not in sight.

Glover inspected him coldly. The white man must maintain the white man's supremacy always. Sixty miles from the coast, with half a dozen Chinese ex-river pirates as followers, and with the kidnaping of a white girl as an errand, a white man must maintain the white man's supremacy or prepare to find the white man's inferiority both uncomfortable and dangerous.

Glover growled inarticulately, looked at his pipe and reached to the fire. He pulled out a smoldering brand, held it to his pipe bowl, and puffed. And then he swung about and flung the flaming brand savagely in Su Yang's face.

Su Yang screamed and clawed at the burning stuff. He flung it madly away, grabbed at the knife in his sash—and was looking into the muzzle of Glover's revolver.

“Let me tell you something,” said Glover, without pretense of politeness and strictly between his teeth. “Gow Lee can tell you what he damned well pleases, but while you're under my orders you'll do what I say. And I won't have any lousy, yellow scum telling me what I'm to do. Understand it?”

Su Yang snarled at him, rubbing at the torched places on his face.

“I'm a white man,” said Glover truculently, “and you're a blasted yellow swine. And what I say goes! Also, if you try to fill me I'll make you curse your mother for bearing you, before you die. Now—” his tone was deadly gentle—“am I in charge of this party or have you orders to take it over?”

Su Yang snarled once more. But the snarl was a surrender.

“Get to hell out,” said. Glover coldly, “and have the men ready to go on in five minutes. Line 'em up outside and tell me when they're ready.”

He turned back to his pipe as Su Yang crawled out of the tiny doorway.

THE rain drummed on the jungle all about. It was a constant, monotonous, booming roar. It filled the ears and the brain and all one's consciousness. All the world was a place of running water. The very game trails were rippling brooks by now, as the leaden skies poured down water and more water, and yet more water, and might continue so for days on end.

Glover growled inarticulately to himself. Gow Lee was afraid of his turning gentleman? Afraid of his throwing down his job? He'd never failed the old swine yet, and he'd done dirtier jobs than this one for him. And never got more than a two week's blowout in Singapore out of it, either. Gow Lee had no right to complain if he did turn gentleman, damn him.

It was a dirty job. A girl up in the hills, a missionary's daughter, left a fortune by a pious uncle back in England. Cables coming to Pahang about it. Gow Lee getting wind of it. A runner had started up with the cables. And that runner was rotting under some mound of jungle stuff now, if the kites hadn't found him. Gow Lee was a damned cold-blooded yellow rat. He'd sent Glover up to kidnap the girl. Maybe ransom, maybe marriage, maybe ... Glover growled, all by himself in the filthy Sakai hut with the first of the rains drumming thunderously on the jungle foliage all about.

Su Yang appeared, snarled that the men were ready to go on, and vanished. Glover scowled more deeply and filled his pipe again.

A nasty mess, all around. Su Yang was feeling his oats. He'd put across one or two things for Gow Lee and felt he was as good as a white man. Glover's eyes narrowed a little. Su Yang would be pleased to go back and report that Glover had had to be killed, and he'd taken over the job and carried it through. And Su Yang would take advantage of the fact that Gow Lee would ask no questions as long as the girl was brought down to him. A white girl at Su Yang's mercy ... He'd have that to brag about to his dying day. And he would brag about it.

Glover got up, frowned and kicked his way out of the flimsy wall of the hut. Out into the rain. He laughed as Su Yang moved quickly away from the entrance from which he should have emerged.

“Take that damned gétah,” he ordered contemptuously, “and throw it in the mud.”

He watched truculently as his order was reluctantly obeyed. Quite a lot of gétah, these Sakai had gathered. The work of months, it must have been. They had hoarded it, no doubt, to barter timorously with some sharp Malay trader who would come upstream and fleece them with cheap knives and cheaper tobacco and cheapest powder and shot. The Malay would go downstream rich in gétah—a couple of piculs of it at least—and the Sakai would be poor with the worthless stuff he'd foist upon them in exchange. But they'd worked months to get their barter material.

“It'd load my men down,” Glover reminded himself savagely. “And Gow Lee pays them to do what I say, anyhow.”

He started off, scowling once more, and in seconds was drenched to the skin again with the downpour from the skies.

The path they followed was a game trail, widened and kept passable by man. In the hinterlands of Malaysia there is a sort of tacit agreement between man and beast concerning trails. Man takes right of way over all beasts but the Striped One, who does as he pleases. But man uses the trails by daylight only. Beasts hold the trail undisturbed from sunset to sunrise—and man sets no traps on the trail.

There were no beast tracks on the jungle path, however, even when it ceased to wind and wander to keep to the lower levels and went climbing steadily upward. The rain had washed all such traces of the compact away. And of course the Sakai leave no tracks anywhere. That is partly instinct, and partly an hereditary knowledge of the Malays, who have hunted them for generations and only lately have ceased to hunt them for slaves in order to take up the possibly less charitable practice of hunting them to trade with them.

Glover plodded doggedly on, with the downward running water rippling up over the toes of his boots as he forced himself up, and up, and up, along the meandering way. He looked at his compass from time to time, but that was habit. There was nothing he could do but follow the jungle path, stooping under some of the massive creepers that soaked up the falling water avidly, stepping over others growing feverishly across the path, and occasionally hacking through some new grown stuff which barred the way.

And all about him was falling rain and dripping foliage, and below him was soaked and saturated mud, and above him was the steady, the monotonous, the maddening drumming of the rain upon the jungle.

It was two hours of steady climbing before he reached the mission station.

The game trails went through thinning jungle, then. Instead of steady dripping, now and again a beating of unintercepted rain poured down upon him. He heard gruntings behind him. His men were telling one another of near approach to their destination.

THE jungle drew back. A clearing. With mountain flanks rearing up dimly, very dimly, on every hand, and vanishing in the gray mist of rain. Nearly invisible patches of crops, planted for the instruction of the Sakai in agriculture, for the filling of their bellies as a prelude to the salvation of their souls. And the mission station.

It was built on poles. The Malay architecture has its utilitarian aspect, and poles do discourage the smaller reptiles. Streaming water from its palm leaf thatch. Dripping water from its wattled walls. Silent, still, desolate.

Glover's followers swaggered a little. Sixty miles up from the coast, the white man's law does not run. There was no white trader, no white official, in very many miles. The only human beings in the jungle were Sakai, who run away when any other man of any other race frowns at them. This dreary, dripping building housed just one white man, a missionary, and one white woman, his daughter. Glover's followers envisioned themselves as brave marauders....

They halted before the desolate little mission. The pungent, suffocating odor of wet wood burning fitfully came to their nostrils. There were jests, more pungent than the wood smoke. Laughter. Knives came out. Su Yang was talking in a low tone.

Glover scowled at him and jerked out his revolver. He shot Su Yang neatly through the forearm, without any warning whatever.

“Next time,” he said savagely, “it'll be through the head. I'm running this! And you might tell your gang, Su Yang, that next time one of them listens to you advising that I be killed and the girl shared among you, I'll kill him, too.”

Su Yang was cursing volubly in the particularly flexible vocabulary of a Chinese river pirate, which includes the dregs of practically all known languages. Glover looked at him and said gently:

“Are you going to keep quiet?”

He shut his lips abruptly, snarling soundlessly. And Glover faced about in the pouring rain and shouted.

There was no answer. No movement. The missionary station dripped water, coming from it vaguely there was that bitter, unpleasant smell of wet wood burning reluctantly.

Glover shouted again. This time he thought he heard a voice murmuring quietly. But there was no answer to his hail. With a growled order to his followers to remain where they were, Glover climbed up the tall stairway. This stairway, instead of a ladder, was nearly the only reminder of civilization on the outside of the mission. Reaching the top he thrust his way within.

An empty room, with a homemade table on which there were books and some magazines. Rather pitiful curtains over the windows. A woven cane couch. Damp, limp curtains about a doorway to an inner room. Glover strode through it, scowling savagely—and halted abruptly.

There was another woven cane couch in here. A man was lying on it, very, very still. Glover know what dead men look like; dead men who have died of jungle fever. A girl was rising to her feet, deathly white. She stared at him, and she said unsteadily:

“Thank—thank God! I—I was praying that a white man would come. I—I——”

She reeled a little. Glover caught her in his arms as she went off into a dead faint.

And suddenly, with the girl he had come to kidnap lying utterly helpless and wholly defenseless in his arms, Glover began to curse in a shaken whisper. The language he used was not pretty. He had not learned it in pretty places. But he stared down at the utterly relaxed features of the prettiest girl he had ever seen, and he whispered words the least of which would have filled that girl with an incredulous, horror-stricken terror.

Which, of course, would have been rather ironically humorous. Because the particularly unprintable phrases Glover was using were the indications of the fine and delicate flower of gentility blossoming again in an extremely unlikely place.

III

GENTILITY is a queer thing. There was a young man named Billups being paddled up a certain river not so far distant, moved by motives which he and all the world would have assured you were the motives of an honorable gentleman. He was bound for Khilit, too, though he had started off upon his journey in a wholly different frame of mind from Glover. And Glover would not like Billups at all. Not at all. But then, Glover was not a gentleman. He was moved at the moment by feelings resembling those of a gentleman, but a dockside gutter rat may work his way desperately up to a master's ticket before he loses it for barratry—which amounts, roughly, to arson upon the high seas—and he may even learn to speak grammatical English in the process, but he does not learn to be a gentleman.

With the unconscious figure of the girl he had come up to kidnap lying helpless in his arms, Glover swore luridly. He was conscious of a vast and gusty rage directed against Gow Lee, against Su Yang, and against the universe at large. But he was not conscious of any urge of chivalry, merely of rage.

Therefore he laid the girl down upon the woven cane couch in the outer room, went once more to the veranda, and with his eyes burning redly said:

“Get to hell away from here!”

Su Yang rubbed a burned spot on his face. Someone was bandaging his arm where Glover had shot it. And Su Yang did not feel especially amiable.

“She here?” he demanded sullenly.

“Yes, she's here,” barked Glover, snarling. “Get to hell away!”

His gun was ready in his hand. He looked to be, as he was, in a killing mood. Su Yang stared up at him, smoldering flames behind the opaque pupils of his eyes.

“Her father?” he asked sullenly.

“Dead!” snapped Glover. “D'you hear me, you scum? I said get to hell away!”

There was the fraction of an instant's hesitation. Then Su Yang snarled a comment under his breath. Grins blossomed suddenly upon the yellow faces of Glover's almond-eyed followers. A man cackled. Another man tittered. Others roared.

Glover went sick with rage. But one white man cannot kill seven men with one revolver—not ex-river pirates of the stamp of these.

Su Yang snarled, but for the moment Glover's hold was supreme. He stood upon the veranda of the mission station, sixty miles from the coast, with the heavy first rain of the wet season pouring down upon him. His eyes were blazing and his face was deadly.

Six of the seven men picked up their loads and went on, laughing. They trooped toward a shed some hundred yards from the house. They sheltered themselves beneath it, having on the way flung back pungent jests at the white man who led them and who wished to be alone with the white girl they had all come to kidnap, and whose father—her only protector—was dead.

Su Yang remained, gazing up at Glover. Not with open insolence, of course. He'd had two lessons today. But gazing up at him with blank eyes that held no expression whatever, with the rain dripping down his body,

“Go with the others,” snarled Glover. “I'm handling this!”

Su Yang continued to stare. Ugly thoughts revolved behind his bland, expressionless eyes.

Glover raised his weapon.

“I'm handling this!” he repeated in sudden strangling rage. “Gow Lee don't care, so long as she gets down to the coast. Get to hell over there before I kill you!”

Su Yang turned and plodded after the others. Glover's breath hissed between his teeth. He flung his revolver shoulder high and sighted on Su Yang's broad back. Then he hesitated and lowered it.

“Make the others suspicious,” he told himself, holding himself calm with a tremendous effort. “Got to hold 'em quiet until night.”

He was trembling with many varied and vehement emotions. Rage was predominant. But it was a peculiar rage. He was muttering:

“Damn him to hell! Warning me not to be a gentleman! By God, I'll show him if I can be a gentleman!”

He turned and went into the mission again. He carefully put his revolver away, remembered, and jerked out the one empty shell and put in a new one.

“Got to get through that damned jungle path—somehow,” he was mumbling savagely. “In the dark. I'd give something for a flashlight. Smash the canoes and go downriver with her....”

He was inside. The girl was sitting up. Blue eyes were staring at him from a face that was as white as chalk.

“I—I heard you!” she said in a peculiar, hoarse whisper. “I—I heard you!”

Glover scowled from pure instinct.

“Forget about it,” he said harshly. “You're all right. I'm going to take you down to the coast.”

He moved forward to look at the still figure on the couch in the inner room. The girl made a desperate movement.

“I—I'll shoot!” she gasped.

She had a little revolver pointed waveringly at him. Glover laughed unpleasantly.

“You don't share Gow Lee's opinion of me,” he said sardonically. “He thinks I'm a gentleman. Put that away. I'm going to look at your father.”

HIS knee brushed against her skirt as he passed her, and she flinched. But he ignored her. He covered the face of the dead man a moment later and went prowling about the flimsy little structure. He felt her eyes upon him, minute by minute. He growled disgustedly as he found thin walls, flimsy floors, nothing that could stop a bullet.

The girl's face expressed a desperate terror. Gradually, that terror lessened. She caught at a scornful thought for courage.

“There isn't anyone else here,” she said coldly.

“I know it,” said Glover grimly. “There isn't any cover here, either.”

He stared out through the rain. It drummed on the roof. It dripped down the eaves. It made a monotonous noise that was unspeakably dreary.

“There's nothing to rob, either,” the girl told him unsteadily. “Hadn't you better—go on?”

Glover turned and stared at her. Then he laughed.

“Go on? Good God! With those yellow devils out there in the shed?”

She was deathly pale, but somehow she felt no menace to herself in his presence.

“You brought them here.”

“You ought to thank God,” he said savagely, “that I'm the one who did. Su Yang might have come alone.”

He paced up and down scowling. From time to time he looked out at the shed beneath which his followers had taken refuge. He looked at his watch.

“It won't be dark for hours,” he muttered. “They'll be suspicious before then... Here. Let me see that gun of yours.”

He held out his hand. She drew back, and her hand closed more tightly about it.

“Now's about the right time,” he said impatiently. “Give it to me!”

She drew away still farther. His arm shot out like lightning. There was a tiny struggle, a wrenching, and a little cry from the girl. She shrank back in renewed terror as he examined the weapon. Her eyes were wide, were terror-struck again.

He looked at the bore of the little gun disgustedly and tossed it back.

“It's no good,” he said savagely. “It's a toy! God—” He caught himself in the middle of a lurid phrase. “I've got to stand them off with my own. If that'd been any good I could have gone over to the shed and wiped them out... Look here!”

Her hand closed over the little weapon again. She stared up at him.

“I want you to scream,” he said shortly. “Scream at the top of your lungs. Some of 'em will come over, to gloat. And I'll shoot them. Then I'll go get the others.”

She swallowed.

“Why—why?”

“Why? Good God! Do you want to go downstream in their hands? I've got to kill the damn—” Again he caught himself. “Don't be a fool! Scream!”

She made no sound, staring at him. He flew into a rage.

“Don't you see I'm trying to save you from the devils? Do you think those yellow fiends came upstream for fun? Do you think they came straight here by accident? Scream!”

Still she stared, voicelessly. He reached out his hands toward her. She brought the little gun unsteadily into line. With a growl, he flung it aside. He shook her, brutally.

“If—if I s-start to scream,” she chattered suddenly, “I—I w-won't be able to stop!”

He released her as she fought off hysteria. She rocked back and forth on the touch for minutes, biting at her lips, stuffing her handkerchief into her mouth to choke back an outcry.

The rain fell steadily. Monotonously. The plashing of waters and the hurried drip-drip-dripping of the eaves was the only sound. But a plank creaked suddenly, somewhere. The flimsy flooring was giving under the strain of a man's weight.

Glover whirled about and savagely began to shoot through the wall, out to the veranda. A man screamed and there was the crash of a body leaping down to the earth. Then padding footsteps fleeing into the mist bf rain.

Glover's face was the face of a devil incarnate as he went snarling after his bullets. He came back, seconds later, glistening with wet.

“They know everything now!” he raged. “Everything! Oh, damn them all to hell!”

He forgot to curb his tongue this time. He was taking with rage, purple with his wrath.

The girl had been frightened into composure by the shots.

“What—what do they know?” she asked in a peculiar, brittle calmness. “What have they found out?”

“They've found out, by God!” panted Glover with burning, rage-enkindled eyes. “The lousy yellow curs have found out that I'm a gentleman!”

And he beat his fists together in a helpless fury.

IV

THE clouds broke just at sunset—the same sunset, by the way, which saw the bow of Billups' canoe turned in to the last small Malay village upstream. Billups was bound for Khilit, too, as you know, and he was a very different sort of person from Glover, as the village where he landed and slept soundly was different from the little mission station.

Up there, for five minutes before the sun vanished below the jungle to the west, vivid carmine rays spread out over the whole world. The green things were made unbelievably green, and glinted ruby colored lights from the wetness that still coated them. The shadows were unbelievably dark, and filled with strange colorings. The jungle glistened like a jewel studded carpet toward the edge of the world. The wet mountain flanks seemed like green velvet hangings shot with gold and draped downward from the sky. The clouds still lowered blackly overhead, but the rain had stopped.

Glover stepped out upon the veranda, and a shot spat out viciously from a garden patch where Indian corn grew tall and rank as an example to the aboriginal Sakai. Glover ignored it. There were no rifles among his erstwhile followers, and no Chinese has yet qualified as a marksman with a revolver at over a hundred yards.

He stared grimly about him. The incredible greenness, the luxuriant verdure that surrounded him, went unnoticed. He was picking out a route toward the jungle path from which he had emerged that day.

The girl's golden head peered out of the door. She came out. He snarled at her.

“Get back inside!” he ordered savagely.

She faced him defiantly. He took her two arms and thrust her within. High pitched yells came from half a dozen spots. Leering, untranslatable yells. They were mocking and envious, and full of the peculiar humor of the Chinese river pirate, which is always Rabelaisian and sometimes even more racy. Glover snarled to himself. Without especial hatred, these men now expected to kill him. There was no more pretense of respect. They would kill him casually, as a part of the task they had been set. Not Su Yang, of course. Su Yang hated him now with a corrosive venom, but it would be the others who would be hard to handle. Su Yang would be blinded to the need of caution by his frenzy for revenge.

The sun vanished. The multitudinous jewel-like glitterings went out like so many lamps. The jungle and the mountain flanks went dark and green and mysterious and deadly. And suddenly it was night.

Glover stared upward. Just above the mountains to the east the clouds were vaguely lighter. Watching, a slow turmoil became noticeable in the dark masses of vapor. The clouds were moving, and the moon rode high.

He went back into the mission, growling. The girl had struck a match to light a tiny kerosene lamp. Her fingers trembled a little as Glover came in.

“Put out that light!” he ordered harshly. “Get something dark on. We're going to try to get through.”

“Get through?” she asked uncertainly.

“Down to the coast,” he growled impatiently. “We've got to get started before those yellow devils try rushing the house. If we can make the jungle path, we're all right—maybe. The moon will be out in a few minutes. We've got to get to the jungle before it begins to shine.”

“But—” she swallowed—“my father there——”

“We've got to leave him,” said Glover brutally. “No time for funerals now.”

They were talking in pitch black, utter darkness. The first match had gone out. She struck another, with fingers that shook.

The light flared up, and in its wavering glow the flimsy little mission station looked queerly dark and sinister. And Glover's face was harsh and savage and by no means reassuring. The girl's golden hair, though, and her fair white skin, showed vividly. Her lips were made oddly blood red by the matchlight glow. Her dress was torn a little at the throat.

She was, as Glover realized quite forcefully, very, very beautiful. Her blue eyes were staring into his.

“But—my father,” she said unsteadily “We—can't——”

He put his hand upon hers and shook the match into oblivion. He held her hand fast.

“We've got to!” he said grimly, his whole body pounding with his heartbeats, “I tell you, we've got to get away from this house...”

It was utterly dark in there. Glover's voice went harshly into sheer nothingness. He could see nothing; hear nothing. He could feel only a soft warm hand caught firmly in his own and tugging for es cape, and the indefinable warmth of another body near his own. It seemed as if he felt the quick, rhythmic beat of her breath upon his throat, as though she had turned to stare desperately through the blackness toward him.

“But I—but I—” She was in terror once more.

There was a crash underneath the house. A man had stumbled over something, down below there among the posts that held the building above the ground.

The silence became ear cracking, then.

Glover put out his other hand and caught her shoulder. He drew her closer to him. She gasped faintly and began to struggle.

“Be still!” he whispered savagely. His mouth went close to her ear. His whisper after that was barely a breathing sound, just audible to an ear inches only from his lips. “Get on top of something. A trunk, maybe. Don't move. They'll be trying to crawl in, everywhere. They'll be shooting up through the floor. Be still. If they get you, I'll be dead.”

He was silent. He released her. He seemed to cease to exist.

IT WAS pitch dark and utterly still. The blood seemed to pound in one's ears. Then quite suddenly, exactly as if someone had opened a thick door, the sounds of the jungle began. Slow, steady drippings, audible for an astonishingly long distance. The cries of insects. Little rustlings of leaves. A very long distance off, the scream of something that was being killed by something else. The tall Indian corn rustled its leaves, a hundred yards away.

The square windows suddenly became visible. A faint bluish light was illuminating the world outside. The moonlight was coming palely through an opening rift in the heavier clouds.

Silence. Stillness. The furtive, beastly snail noises of the jungle. Utter silence in the house. Then some insect safely ensconced in the palm leaf thatch began to chirp stridently.

A board squeaked. The girl heard a sudden thudding noise in the room in which she was. There was a thunderous explosion beneath the house and the ripping noise of a bullet tearing its way through the planking. A man groaned—where Glover had been.

The girl's teeth chattered, and she stuffed her handkerchief between them to still the noise. The groan did not come again. There was no other sound made by any living thing. Somewhere in the house the ticking of a tiny watch, a woman's watch, burst through the stillness to be thunderously loud. It went on merrily, abstractedly. It was hateful in its oblivious preoccupation.

The girl felt her head turning of its own volition. The squares of the windows were becoming brighter. The clouds before the moon were thinning still more and the windows became starkly rectangular. And the girl saw one of the angular corners becoming blurred. Very, very slowly, a round thing—an inhuman thing—was moving as if to peer within.

Her ears tingled in anticipation of the explosion that should come at any instant. It did not come. It did not come ... The round thing was peering openly in the window space now ... The girl felt herself growing cold all over. There was no one to defend her ... That groan....

The rounded thing moved higher. It was very bright outside, now. With a sudden gasp of horror the girl saw that the round thing had no neck. Then her staring eyes discerned the slender pole that upheld the dummy. It had been intended to draw the fire of any living man who might be in the house. And his shot, of course, would guide the fusillade of those beneath the flimsy flooring. But no man had fired at the dummy. Which might mean that the only man able to fire might be dead....

The girl caught her breath in a gasp that was like a moan of pure terror as the thought sank home. She had feared Glover; had feared him horribly. But now the silent, furtive, deadly figures without seemed more horrible still.

She heard the faintest possible noise. An indefinable rustle. Then the tiniest conceivable clatter. Terror sharpened senses said, “Someone has taken off his boots. That clatter was the lace tips on the floor.”

She strained her eyes past belief. The dimmest of glows came in through the window from the moonlight outside. There was a bulk somewhere on the floor. She could see it vaguely; could feel it somehow ... It was writhing slowly toward the doorway. Going away from her. Very, very slowly.

She heard the faint scratching sound of a man, climbing, who had slipped and caught himself. They were climbing now. Their dummy hadn't been shot at. They believed they'd killed Glover with that first shot. It had been he who groaned. He was dead....

THE writhing dark bulk on the floor moved with infinite slowness from pitch darkness into abysmal blackness. The girl stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth, shaking in every limb, her eyes wide and staring. It seemed that there were other writhing shapes upon the floor. It seemed that there was one coming with a terrible slowness through that other doorway. And one was creeping past the couch on which she sat. Something was going to touch her. Something was going to touch her ... Something—was—going—to—touch—her....

She screamed. Shrilly. Senselessly. She screamed again.

Something crashed into the wall. She could not stop screaming now, but a detached, cold personality that heard the screams coming from her lips recognized that the succeeding thud upon the floor was made by a boot, flung against the wall to seem as if a man were there.

A yellow spurt of flame crashed out almost over her shoulder, from the other room. In its flash, still screaming, the girl saw Glover, photographically distinct, seeming frozen in the act of springing across the room toward her with his face a mask of savagery.

The flash was gone. Her screams broke off short. She knew Glover was alive.

Before his leap was complete she heard his weapon explode. She felt the wind of the bullet going past her head. Other guns were going swiftly beneath the floor. And with an uncanny distinctness she saw in Glover's gun flash the floor splashing up splinters as men beneath her poured up lead at the spot where the boot had fallen.

Then there was a gasping cry behind her. Glover had swept past, plunging in stockinged feet without sound. The breeze of his passing fanned her. She heard him roar in unutterable savagery. There was a moment's sickening stillness, and she heard him return.

The fusillade from below had stopped abruptly. The men under the flooring had heard him bellowing elsewhere than where they were shooting. They hesitated.

The girl heard the flooring creak. She heard the gasp of a man making some supreme effort. She heard muscles crack, strained to the utmost. Then came a crashing sound, a splintering noise, the senseless squeaking of splintered wood.

The couch on which the girl sat shuddered suddenly. An abrupt cold breath blew upward from below. With a bellow that was wholly animal-like in its bestial fury, she heard Glover spring down.

Then there was pandemonium beneath the house. Shots, cries, screams. The screams were retreating swiftly.

Glover snarled like a wild beast beneath the girl's feet. There was no flooring where her toes had rested. There was a gaping hole in the flimsy planking, through which the dank breath of the night floated up. Glover had broken a hole in the makeshift planking. He had used a man as the hammer with which to smash the thin and brittle wood.

He came up the steps to the veranda again, snarling to himself. He came into the room where she sat. She heard him strike a match.

“Are you all right?” he demanded harshly.

The light flared up. She nodded, voiceless. There was blood upon his face. There was blood upon his hands. She stared at him in the matchlight, unable to speak.

“What're you looking at me like that for?” he asked heavily.

She tried to answer him, but could not. She could only gasp a little.

“What're you looking at me like that for?” he demanded furiously. “I've killed one of the dogs, but it was for you!”

He went into a rage as she continued to stare wordlessly at him.

“By God! Looking at me like that! I'll show you!”

He seized her arms and dragged her to her feet, facing him. One of her hands went to her throat. It was swollen. Choking. Words would not come. He flung down the match.

“Looking at me like I'm scum!” he roared into the darkness. “All right! If I'm scum. I'll act like it!”

He crushed her to him. Her whole body was limp, incapable of resistance. She felt herself pressed close, felt his lips savagely upon hers, felt herself being kissed furiously, passionately, desperately ... Then she felt herself pushed roughly away.

“You shan't come the toff over me!” he snarled. “By God! You shan't come the toff over me!”

She heard him padding savagely into the next room in his stockinged feet, looking for someone else to kill.

V

FAR, far away, there were clouds over the jungle toward the coast. From these clouds rain was falling in a steady flood. The edge of the world was blotted out by a gray mist that fell straight down from those lowering clouds. But that was many miles away....

The sun was shining on the mission station of of Khilit, and upon the jungle around the mission, and upon the little patches of grain and vegetables that were to have been the opening moves in a campaign to bring the Sakai into the fold of those who love the Christian God. Filthy little folk, the Sakai. Very nearly the vermin the Malays consider them. But when their bellies are full—which is rarely—they are reasonably happy. People are that way.

In the sunlight the mission was no longer a dreary, dripping, sodden hut. It was a cheery and colorful little house, made bright with flowers and with desperately gay little curtains at the windows. It was a Malay hut, built so by design for the encouragement of the Sakai to architecture. Futilely, of course. The mission would done just as well in a comfortable house. But theories are stubborn things to combat, especially when a Foreign Mission Board has decided that the conversion of the heathen is advanced by the adoption and adaptation of native customs of housing and diet by its missionaries. Fortunately, the Board rarely see a picture of a Sakai hut, and never even hear of the Sakai dietary. Even the theory might be shaken by a suitably authenticated report on the nourishing content of the various grubs and beetles which supplement the Sakai ration.

The flowers blossomed hugely. The garden patches were vividly green, and save for lesser vegetables that had been beaten flat by the first of the rains, seemed flourishing and proud.

Glover sat on the veranda, brushing partly dried mud from his trouser legs and body. He scowled as he desisted long enough to fill his pipe and light it.

“You needn't needn't worry about those men as long as I'm alive,” he said truculently. “Not all. Until I'm killed, the yellow devils looking won't dare try anything.”

He made no reference to the mud upon bis clothing. He ignored forcefully the task upon which he had been engaged. There had been a funeral of sorts, and there was no longer a man dead of jungle fever in one of the couches inside the house.

The girl looked white and tired. Horrors can crowd too closely to hurt.

“I wish, though,” growled Glover, “those da—those Sakai would turn up.”

The girl spoke tiredly.

“They're very timid. It took father a long time to make friends with them. And some of the very wild ones never did come near.”

The Sakai are timid. They've been hunted for all of fifty generations by the Malays, and they are as wild and as scary as hares. A Sakai man can be sleeping soundly by a stream edge, and the dip of a paddle twenty yards off will waken him and he will have vanished into the jungle before the stroke can be repeated. And then you can try to find him.

Glover scowled at his need of such animals. He'd seen Sakai. Stunted, wizened little men, scabrous with some skin disease and unbelievably naked. He'd been told that they were so poverty-stricken, even in language, that they had no words for numerals higher than three. Those who could count up to the brain cracking total of ten were forced to use Malay words for the numbers. And there were Sakai in the jungle all about. Undoubtedly.

“One was here last night,” said the girl suddenly. “Probably Pa A'Gap.”

Glover stared at her and growled incredulously.

“He left a sign for me,” said the girl slowly. “Seven blow gun darts, pointed in every direction. They were smeared with ipoh sap. That's the Sakai poison, you know. One of them was broken.”

Glover grunted. It was clear enough, though not easy to believe. There were six men with Su Yang. And one, at least, he had killed. When he had broken through the floor with him. That man was the broken dart. Darts meant danger, of course. Blown from long, flimsy reeds the Sakai use, the darts are dangerous. The Sakai kill birds and small game with them even unpoisoned. But they do not dare to hunt men.

“I didn't see the little beast,” growled Glover.

She stared.

“You were awake all night?”

Glover shrugged, frowning. He had been, of course. Su Yang wouldn't leave while the girl was here. He wanted the girl, both for himself and to deliver her to Gow Lee. His own possession of her would be something to boast of. Her delivery to Gow Lee would produce a reward. Su Yang wouldn't leave on those accounts alone. But especially Su Yang would not leave while Glover still lived. Not now. He would not leave until Glover was dead, and by preference in some ghastly and lingering fashion of his own contriving. So Glover had to watch.

“Seven darts, one broken,” Glover growled. “That means six men to look out for. One of 'em's dead.”

“There was an eighth dart,” said the girl quietly. “It was pointed toward the house. But that wasn't smeared with ipoh.”

Glover grunted.

“That's praise for me, I suppose,” he said sardonically.

“It is. What did you do that they know of?”

Glover growled. He was sleepy. But he remembered ordering the gétah his followers were taking from the Sakai village, flung down in the mud again. Eyes must have been watching, then, and it chalked up to his credit. He rumbled disgustedly.

HIS eyes roved frowningly over the vast expanse of jungle down toward the coast. It went on and on, past all imagining. Thick as the jungle was, and deadly, and full of inextricably tangled undergrowth, it was no wonder that the Malays clung to the banks of the streams. The streams are the true highways in Malaysia, and the game trails serve as thoroughfares almost exclusively for the little wild folk who alone slip furtively through the jungle.

A little wisp of vapor trickled out through the massy green of the jungle roof. It spread and grew thicker. It became respectably dense. Something was burning down in there. Glover sat up when he realized what it was. He opened his mouth to swear luridly.

“That's a Sakai village burning,” said the girl quietly. “There's one down there. Your—those men haven't traveled far.”

Glover snarled, staring at the smoke.

“There are two of them here now,” he rumbled. “Hidden in the sugar cane yonder.”

He waved his hand, still watching the smoke. There would be no more open fighting, he knew. He had ignored the watchers until now. These were professional fighting men and they would blow his head off casually from behind, or ambush him and send half a dozen bullets at once into his spine—the Chinese killer's favorite target—but they would not fight in the open again where he would have a chance to kill them.

The smoke curled upward. Just as much smoke as would come from the burning of a Sakai village made out of the flimsiest and most temporary of shelters, and no more. Glover scowled savagely.

Then in the infinite silence that sometimes hangs over the jungle in morning sunlight, the thin and muted sound of a shot reached their ears. Just one shot. That was all.

The girl's face paled a little. Glover's lips set tightly and his eyes burned. Glover's expression was not especially gentle, just then.

“They—they've killed somebody,” said the girl faintly.

Glover's lips opened to emit a growl that was all profanity.

Over in the sugar cane, someone tried an experimental shot. He had no especial hope of hitting Glover. The shot was more an indication of boredom than anything else. But the bullet tore through the roof of the mission. Snarling, Glover sent a burst of shots at the still hovering wisp of smoke that showed where the shot had come from. A man ran away, crashing through the cane stalks.

Silence fell again. Glover sucked at his pipe. He got up, suddenly, and went swiftly inside to peer out the window at the rear of the mission. He saw nothing. The emptiness of the cleared space annoyed him. He had been sitting on the veranda in hopes of luring someone to make a dash for the house from the rear.

He went back to the veranda.

“I—heard another shot,” said the girl unsteadily. “They must be hunting down the poor Sakai.”

“Vermin,” growled Glover. “No harm if they are killed. If they had the guts of a jellyfish they'd use their blowguns. Potting from behind trees, they could wipe out the yellow devils.”

He smoked, scowling, watching the drifting smoke over the jungle. He'd been in that village. The entire population had fled at the approach of strangers. He'd warmed himself beside a reeking fire in a lice ridden hut, and he'd kicked half the side out in emerging, to keep from crawling out the entrance where he'd suspected Su Yang might be waiting. He, Glover, wouldn't have burned the damned village. He despised the filthy little beasts too much....

THERE was another distant, muted shot. Others answered it. Quite a little flurry of shooting. It was nearer than the first shot had been. It sounded other as if someone were running down the jangle path, shooting when he had to, running when he could.

Glover took the pipe out of his mouth. “Now, what the hell?” he asked meditatively of the universe.

The girl was straining her eyes and ears, watching the jungle in a peculiar anxiety, listening in meaningless dread.

“Someone's running away from somebody,” she said faintly, looking to Glover for confirmation.

He growled an assent and slipped suddenly into the house. A yell arose from the watcher in the sugar cane. Glover reached the back of the house only in time to see a fleeing figure diving back to cover. He scowled disgustedly. If he'd waited fifteen or twenty seconds more, that yellow scum would have been too close to the mission to get away. He'd have brought him down with a shot in the back....

He heard the next shot off in the jungle, even from the back of the mission. It was a great deal nearer. Very near. A voice screamed something, off behind the wall of jungle trees. Glover went diving to the front. That voice had been Chinese, and if it was a Chinese in flight, Glover ought get him as he sped out of the jungle. And if it was someone running from one of Su Yang's amiable companions....

He dusted the earth near where he thought a figure was moving to intercept a fugitive or one of the fugitive's pursuers.

Another shot from the jungle. Near by. At any second....

A figure came panting desperately out into the cleared space, dazed and exhausted, its clothes torn in ribbons and its flesh scratched and torn by the jungle thorns. A white man, sun helmet gone, wild eyed and in panic. He ran with sobbing breaths clogging in his throat.

Someone ran to meet him—one of Su Yang's gang. With a roar of fury, Glover flung himself off the veranda and went racing.

Shots spat in the sunlit stillness. Su Yang's follower yelped and plunged for the jungle. He made it. The white man staggered on. Glover waited grimly for more figures to emerge from the trail, but the man who had just dived into cover yelled shrill warning to the unseen pursuers.

Snarling, Glover gave it up. He went back to the mission glowering. The white man was sitting down, panting. The girl was nowhere in sight. With a grunt, Glover plunged inside the hut. But she was quite safe. She was pouring water into a glass.

“Don't go out of sight again,” growled Glover wrathfully. “Not without letting me know. Understand?”

The girl nodded. Her hands were trembling a little as she poured out water to carry to the strange white man. She seemed to be trying to hide a strange, overwhelming relief. Glover read her expression all too well. Glad because another white man had come. Glad because there was somebody else around to protect her. To protect her against him! A gusty wrath swept over Glover. He was not a gentleman. He had never been a gentleman. He never would be a gentleman. He snarled savagely at her.

“That's it, eh?”

He went quickly back to the veranda. The other white man was staring slowly about, orienting himself already though the breath still rasped in his throat. Glover loomed above him.

“Who the devil are you?” he demanded unpleasantly. “And what the bloody hell are you doing here?”

VI

THERE was instructive hostility developed during the long, hot afternoon between the two white men at Khilit. One, of course, was Glover, whose character was not above reproach and whose past history was not reassuring. The other was First Mate Billups of the Camden Town, who was a very praiseworthy young man indeed. But the hostility was rather that of thought than of action. External affairs demanded concerted action, but nothing could make for cordiality.

Su Yang's followers opened up with a rifle just before sundown and Glover stared at Billups and turned purple with rage.

“That's your rifle!” he raged. “There's nowhere else they could get one!”

First Mate Billups nodded in uneasy composure.

“It was weighing me down when I legged it down the jungle path,” he explained placatingly. “I dropped it. I thought they'd string out, chasing me, and I'd pot them one by one as they caught up.”

A bullet whizzed through the palm leaf thatch overhead, struck a bamboo joist and smashed it, was deflected in the process and screeched downward to bury itself in one of the heavy timber uprights that held the house off the ground.

“Of all the damned fools!” snarled Glover. “You could have got the bolt out, anyhow! Good God! You damned——”

He flung out of the room, incoherent and beside himself with fury. He had not liked First Mate Billups from the beginning, and the timidly admiring glances he had continually noted the girl giving the newcomer did not add to his admiration. Billups was young, and fresh cheeked, and when he was cleaned up and calmed down he had recovered some of that bland cockiness a youthful merchant marine officer acquired with his first stripe of gold braid.

Glover went out on the veranda, and a bullet cut the air half a yard from his head. He snarled futilely at the marksman, made sure no one was worming a way toward the house, and went back inside.

Billups drew away from the girl as he entered. She cast a frightened glance at Glover. He growled at them both and went into the other room. He reassured himself of the emptiness of the other side of the clearing. He went back to the others, raging.

“That tears it,” he said grimly. “That blasted rifle!”

“I don't see what harm it does,” protested Billups defensively. “They had guns before, didn't they?”

Glover growled contemptuously at him. He turned to the girl.

“Has it—” he jerked a scornful thumb at Billups—“got guts?”

Billups reddened angrily.

“What the devil do you mean?” he demanded furiously.

“If it has,” said Glover savagely, “I want it to help me. I'm going to go out there when the light's a bit worse. They'll shoot at me. If it weren't for that damned rifle, I'd be all right. But I'll risk it. I'll drop. They'll come out to me. And I want it to kill some of them.”

“How?”

“Shoot them,” said Glover in a sardonic gentleness. “Shoot them with a pistol. Do you know how to shoot off a pistol?”

Billups bit his lips.

“I didn't come up here—” he began in chilly dignity.

“To fight? I know it,” said Glover contemptuously. “But you'll fight them or I'll break your neck between my fingers. Listen to me! When the light's a bit worse I'll start toward the edge of the clearing. I'll shout that I want to make a bargain. You'll crawl along behind me, as much under cover as you can. Get as near as you dare without being seen. They may be fools enough to come out—though I doubt it. If they do, you'll try to kill them. I'll handle those you miss. If they don't come out, it'll be because they'll shoot at me. When they do, I'll drop. Then they'll wait a bit and come out to knife me, especially if I groan a little. You'll kill them. Understand?”

Billups stared.

“You mean,” he said incredulously, “you'll go out under a flag of truce and expect me to murder the men who come to parley with you?”

Glover scowled.

“Don't be a damned fool!” he said. “That trick ought to get two or three of them. And we've got to kill them!”

“But it's murder!” said Billups hotly. “Luring men into the open and then shooting them down!”

“Maybe,” said Glover sardonically, “it's a legal execution if they ambush us on the trail and kill us.”

“I won't do it,” said Billups hotly. “I'll kill any man in fair fight, but I won't murder them in cold blood like that!”

Glover stared at him, with death in his eyes.

“And besides,” said Billups angrily, “that would leave Alice in the house with no one to protect her!”

Glover's face was very far from a pretty sight. He scowled contemptuously.

“Stay here and protect her, then,” he said sardonically. “I'm going to try it alone. If they get me, maybe you can hold them off long enough for some Sakai to risk slipping up to the house at night. One did that last night. Get him to lead you off in the jungle. There's no other way for you to get clear.”

With a growl of utter disgust he turned and made for the door.

IN THE deepening darkness Billups' face went utterly pale. He jumped at a conclusion and acted on it.

“Stop, or I'll fire!” he barked.

Glover whirled, to look into the muzzle of Billups' revolver.

“You know what those devils are here for,” panted Billups. “You know the only thing they can want is Alice. There's nothing worth taking in the house—but a white woman! You know they don't care about you. You know if you can get among the jungle trees they won't try to find you. They don't want you! They want Alice! And you're planning to try to make the jungle and get away, leaving here here! I'm up to your tricks, my man! You shan't get away as easily as all that!”

Glover swayed forward as if to spring, his face the face of a devil.

“Stand back,” cried Billups shrilly, “or I'll fire!”

Glover's hands were closing and unclosing convulsively. A stream of unspeakable profanity burst from his lips.

“You fool!” he snarled. “You damned fool! You——”

“You're going to stay here,” said Billups crisply, “and help hold them off. If they rush the house, they'll kill you, too. You'll have to fight. And I'll take your gun and keep it until it's needed.”

Glover crouched a little as Billups moved forward. His hands were curved like talons.

“By God!” he gasped, strangling on his rage. “If you come in arm's length of me I'll kill you!”

He meant it. He was mad with rage, wild with fury alike at the stupidity and the smugness of this young man who had come blundering into this affair with strictly businesslike romantic intentions, and now was posing as a hero. It was growing darker with the swiftness of tropic nightfall. Glover's figure was blurring against the background of the flimsy little room.

He straightened up, containing his rage by a terrific effort.

“I shan't go out,” he rasped. “If anything happened to me she'd not be safe with only a fool like you to protect her. But I'm going to take the back of the house. You take the front. Keep those blasted devils from breaking in. She can look and see that I haven't run away when she chooses.”

He strode to the rear, stepping across the gaping hole in the floor that he had made the night previous, battering through the brittle planking with the body of a man. He disappeared. There was silence, Billups still instinctively facing the door through which he had vanished, with his revolver ready.

“What a beast!” said Billups shakenly. “If I didn't need him to help fight. I'd let him go and good riddance.”

“I don't think he meant to run away,” said the girl slowly. “He fought for me rather—splendidly last night.”

It was entirely dark outside, now. The furtive little noises of the jungle were beginning. Billups put up his hand and secretly wiped the sweat from his forehead.

“We've got to watch,” he said desperately. “It's the devil of a mess, Alice. I—I don't know whether we'll ever see the sunrise. But I'll die fighting for you. And ... Go and see if he's in the other room, won't you?”

“He's there,” said the girl quietly. “Let us watch.”

She clasped her hand in Billups' as he took up his post by a window which commanded a good part of the clearing. And when the moon came out, as it did presently, the watching became less tense a business. They could see sharp and vivid shadows, even the sword shaped shadows of individual blades of grass beneath the full, harvest moon.

Considering the location, the atmosphere, and the spice of danger, the night was an ideally romantic one. As time went on and there was no alarm, Billups became tentatively amorous. The amorous tendencies of men, and the susceptibility of women, increases markedly when there is danger in the air. It is a biological law, perhaps. Certainly it is a fact.

But the intentions of Billups were strictly honorable. Strictly.

Glover, though, snarled silently to himself as he watched the edge of the jungle. He hated Billups with a deep and venomous hatred.

“I'd like,” he spat to the dark walls about him and stared out at a moonlit world that was pure magic and sheer deadliness, “I'd like to stick a knife in his belly and twist it.”

He envisioned the process with a savage satisfaction. But he needed Billups just now. An extra man with an extra revolver was a godsend, even when troubled with scruples or cowardice. The two characteristics, naturally, would be exactly alike in reducing the effectiveness of the reinforcement.

But a good deal of Glover's hatred came from the causes behind Billups' arrival. He'd come up to Khilit to inform the girl of her uncle's death and her own inheritance. His mother had cabled him about the matter, and Glover sardonically understood the motives back of the cable and the journey alike. Billups and Alice, the girl, had been children together. There had even been a time when they looked forward vaguely to marriage. Then Billups acquired a merchant marine uniform with a junior officer's stripes, and lost sight of her in his new absorption in his own importance. But when a canny mother back in England took advantage of the providential presence of her son's ship near the mission station of an heiress, she had cabled him explicitly.

“I know 'em,” raged Glover to himself. “A rich wife. A chance for the damned prig to get on easy street.”

BILLUPS had started upcountry in that bland cockiness of a personable young man who is about to confer the honor of a proposal upon a girl who aforetime adored him abjectly. He traveled alone, for the romantic effect of one risking his life to bring good tidings to a loved one. A tame Sakai was hired at the last Malay village on the stream, to guide him to Khilit.

Somehow, he'd missed the three Chinese who went down to loot the Sakai village on the trail; to gather up again the gétah Glover had made them abandon. Number One gutta-percha fetches four hundred Straits dollars a picul in Singapore these days. It is worth taking. The Sakai village burst into flames half an hour behind Billups. He was hardly two miles from Khilit when the three Chinese came up in his rear and killed the tame Sakai and painstakingly tried to kill him. They'd seen his bootmarks in the trail and hurried.

Billups got rattled. These men weren't the reedy coolies he knew. They were big men, savage men, fighters. He bolted, at a speed of which he had not known himself capable. Twice they got within shooting distance. Once he fell sprawling over a trailing creeper and had to drive them under cover with his revolver before he could get away to run again. And he'd gotten into Khilit in an awful panic.

That wasn't quite the way he explained the matter. As he told it, his conduct throughout had been the result of prompt, though mature, deliberation. But Glover had laughed unpleasantly when he first told his tale, and he snarled now at the memory.

“The blasted bully!” he growled contemptuously.

Silence from the edge of the jungle. Stillness. The jungle can be utterly still and yet give the feeling of being full of noises one can almost hear. Clear, vivid moonlight shining down. Very, very safe. Nobody could approach the house without being seen. Nobody at all.

The orange spurt of flame from the rifle came again. Again a bullet tore crashingly through the dry, thatched roof. A wait of a couple of minutes, and the rifle went off once more. Again the whine of the bullet. Again the spiteful crackling noise as the missle went through flimsy stuff overhead.

“They're shooting at the roof,” growled Glover savagely. “They're covering something. Something!” He moved catlike to the door of the other room. “What's going on?” he demanded.

There was a stirring. Glover's voice was not gentle at any time. And his presence, his air, was never exactly benevolent. What he intended as a crisp inquiry sounded rather like a belligerent bellow.

And it is a biological law that the romantic instincts of both sexes are stimulated by danger. The romantic instincts. And Billups had come up to Khilit in the first place to make honorable proposal of matrimony—being moved thereto by economic motives. And just five minutes before he had made that honorable proposal; his economic motives having been thrust into the background by the immutable law just mentioned. In consequence, Glover's growled inquiry broke into a scene of entirely respectable romantic rapture, and it sounded like the wrathful rhetoric of a jealous male about to commit murder.

“What's going on?” he roared again. He thought, of course, that Billups had neglected his watch. Which, in his preoccupation with romance, Billups had done.

But Billups spoke sternly, and grimly, and with the wild exultation of a man who has just heard the woman he loves confess her love for him.

“I've got a gun trained on you,” he said sharply. “And you'll go back and be ready to fight or I'll fill you full of lead!”

And Glover really bellowed then. With a vast and consuming rage. A certain pungent scent had reached his nostrils.

“You fool!” he roared. “You damned fool! They've set the house on fire!”

He plunged through the hole in the flooring, dropping with a crash to the ground beneath. They heard him snarling below. Half a dozen weapons seemed to open upon him, because he would be a good target in silhouette beneath the house with the world all glimmering moonlight.

They heard bullets nicking and nipping at the posts that supported the house. They heard the crash of his revolver.

Then he came scrambling up into the house again, his voice a thick, smothering rumble of pure rage.

“They shot fire arrows,” he snarled. “The thatch is on fire. Half the bloody house is burning! And they're waiting outside!”

Billups scented the smoke now. It was rather remarkable that he had not noticed it before. But biological laws sometimes conflict, and the urge to romance sometimes runs counter to the law of self-preservation.

“We've got to break for the jungle,” said Billups crisply. “You go first, Glover—so I can watch you. Alice and I'll come next. God knows, we haven't much chance, but we'll try it.”

It was a noble speech, and it was romantic, and it was in the best tradition of the merchant marine, whose officers have to think of helpless women sometimes in their charge, and sometimes have to hold down a panic-stricken crew in times of emergency.

But Glover snarled. He crouched down, reaching out. A pause of the fraction of a second, and Billups felt a terrific impact. He went to the floor with the ruins of a flung chair on top of him. Glover hurtled after the chair and wrenched his revolver savagely out of his hand.

“You damned fool!” roared Glover. “Keep still or I'll break your blasted neck!”

And with savage swiftness he bound Billups' hands behind him.

VII

THE girl saw Glover turn away. His bulk loomed huge and strange in the darkness. The only light was the pale glow that diffused in through the curtained windows. Billups bumped clumsily against her. His bound hands touched and caught at hers. She held fast, in a strange blend of hope and terror and the aftermath of the romantic interlude that Glover had interrupted. She was trembling, and the sharp smell of burning thatch stung her nostrils. The window toward the west was glowing a little more brightly than the others. With a faintly reddish glow. There were little cracklings overhead. She clung tightly to Billups' bound hands.

Glover was scooping up small things and cramming them in his pockets. Rock salt, that her father had given the Sakai as presents. Tobacco; trade tobacco, for which the Sakai would sell their souls if they had any. And odds and ends. He was growling to himself, rumbling horrible things. In a towering rage. But moving with a swift purposefulness. The girl watched his vaguely defined form moving about.

Billups' hands tightened upon hers, meaningly. He was saying something in a guarded tone. Something tense and urgent. What was it?

“Let my hands loose!” he was whispering desperately. “Let my hands loose! Quick! I'll kill this beast and we'll make a break for it!”

Her fingers were fumbling with hard knots, even while she was trying to find words to say that he shouldn't kill Glover. The knots were hard, and Billups was impatient. He moved uneasily while she worked at them.

“Quick!” he whispered again, in an agony of impatience. “Quick! Before he....”

Glover was making a strange bundle. Crumpled paper and sheets from a couch. A tablecloth. Another one. He was jerking the curtains from the windows and bundling them together with the door curtains into a loose ball. She could see him working feverishly by the little light that came in the windows. The smell of smoke was stronger. He reached upward and wrenched at the ceiling cloth. It came away with a rotten ripping sound. Dust and scraps of trash came with it. Something landed with a little plop! and went scuttling away. The smoke was much thicker now. It was difficult to breathe. The knots were very hard.

The girl gasped as Billups was jerked away. Glover was staring into her face, savagely. A little tongue of flame licked into sight overhead. Its light came down the hole where the ceiling cloth had been pulled away. Glover's eyes were hot with rage.

“I'm handling this,” he snapped. “Leave him alone!”

Back to his task. He had thrown Billups furiously against the wall. And Billups was struggling to his feet again, his face at once drawn and desperate and raging.

Glover was striking a match. He held it to a loose, unwieldy bundle of dresses and curtains. The flimsy stuff caught brightly and smoked horribly. He thrust the burning edge against another bundle already prepared. That caught and he was hastening out of sight.

The girl choked upon smoke. Her eyes went searching for Billups. He was looking upward. Three little tongues of flame showed inside, now. Tiny twinkling sparks drifted downward.

Glover came back, his arms empty. The room was full of a bitter, strangling smoke. The mingled reek of burning cloth and scorching thatch filled the place. It was growing light inside the mission, from the flames eating through the roof. Glover's face was the face of a devil. He was seizing the second bundle, the smoking one, and thrusting it savagely against the last remaining one. That caught. He rushed out.

The crackling was loud. Horribly loud. A little roaring noise was audible now, too. And the windows glowed more brightly from the flames spreading on the outside of the thatch.

Glover's revolver went off thunderously. The girl heard him cursing savagely on the veranda. She coughed uncontrollably. Billups was stumbling toward her. She reached out her arms helplessly to him.

GLOVER came back. He kicked the last bundle of stuff down through hole in the floor. It was pouring out a dense, a strangling cloud of almost tangible whiteness. It was bright inside the mission now, but one could see nothing because of the smoke.

Glover seized her. The grip of his hands on her shoulders hurt. She shrank away, her lips parting.

A snarl of rage sounded deafeningly loud in her ears. She was lifted off her feet, struggling futilely.

“I'm not good enough to touch you, eh?” raged a voice close by her ear. “I'll show you!”

A great paw seized her face, turning it upward. Glover's face blotted out everything. She was being kissed. Repeatedly, deliberately, insultingly. Stark terror filled her as she felt herself being swung downward through the air. Terror widened eyes saw Billups cursing wildly and flinging himself, bound as he was, savagely upon Glover, trying to disable him by the sheer impact of his body.

She heard Glover growl furiously. Heard a momentary struggle. She was on her feet now, on the earth under the house where an incredible volume of smoke was pouring out of the bundles of cloth and stuff Glover had lighted and flung out. She stumbled and bumped against the posts supporting the house. Someone came hurtling down through the opening in the floor. Billups, fallen flat and unable to get up.

Glover came leaping down behind him. He jerked Billups to his feet. The girl reached out her hand desperately, and saw that he was untying Billups' hands.

“Downward in the smoke,” he snarled to her. “That'll cover us a little. Understand?”

She tried to gasp an assent, but choked upon the smoke. Glover thrust Billups against her.

“Downward!” he snapped. “Keep in the smoke! If you see anybody, shoot him! And if you try to kill me. I'll break your back with my hands!”

Here, under the mission, the smoke was thick, colorless cloud which blotted out everything and let her see Billups and Glover only as misty silhouettes against the bright moonlight outside. But as the three of them ran strangling in the midst of the low lying cloud that poured from the smoldering bedding and clothes, it became impossible to see outlines. The smoke was a fleecy white cloud that burned the lungs, that blinded the eyes, that was a concealment and a torture and a godsend.

It hung close to the ground. The three separate smoke trails blended into a single long streamer of vapor that was shoulder high or better, and that was as thick as a wall. They ran across the little garden patches that they could not see beneath their feet. They ran desperately, coughing and strangling and running. The smoke was suddenly tinged with pinkish light. With an abrupt, hollow booming, the mission caught fire and flamed up in an impressive pillar of fire, with little sparks dancing madly in the rising currents of air. The moonlight went pale and wan by contrast. In momentary glimpses the girl could see the edge of the jungle; tall trees and wide flung branches, glowing redly in the glare.

More to the point, the smoke cloud through which the three of them struggled began to glow translucently. The girl, gasping for breath in the thick stuff which made every breath a torment, saw weird, exaggerated shadows of herself and Billups and Glover flung on ahead of them. Huge long shadows, making grotesque gestures in the strangling fog.

A yell arose. Toiling desperately after Glover and Billups, the girl realized that it came from more than one throat. She saw a tiny spark through the glowing reddish mist. The crack of the shot and the whine of the bullet followed instantly. Su Yang was off in the very edge of the jungle, nursing a scorched face, a bullet punctured arm, and a thirst for vengeance as the mission burned.

A shadow made extraordinary gesticulations in the smoke. A strange shadow, from behind. The girl saw Glover whirl and shoot at it. Then she stumbled and tall canes bumped and thrashed at her. She and the two white men were crashing their way through the patch of Indian corn, making a prodigious din that told but too plainly of their flight.

More yells came. Dried bamboo stalks in the burning building began to explode with brittle detonations as the heated air in the several joints burst open the partly burned stalks. The jungle loomed dark and terrible overhead, with crimson lights from the fire showing upon its dark leaves. Glover swung about and waited fiercely, his features contorted into a grimace of rage. The girl saw the now distant firelight glittering on the polished metal of his revolver as Billups dragged her past.

THE jungle ... Something with thorns scratched her arms. There were slim, hard stalks of jungle things, and the rough, harsh bark of trees. Creepers lashed at her. Billups stumbled and recovered, plunging madly into the jungle and dragging the girl desperately behind him. She stumbled and fought to keep up, though he was nearly jerking her off her feet.

Foliage closed about them. From an intolerable brightness, there was a vast obscurity with bright spots of reddish light from the clearing. Glover was still back there. She could hear his gun going savagely. Then the crashing as he, too, dived into the jungle. He blundered among the thorny growth, calling for them in a voice like the roaring of a bull.

The girl felt herself answering, “Here!” the instant before Billups' hand closed over her mouth, and the instant before he had desperately whispered, “Hush!”

The thrashing that was Glover turned and came toward them. Shouts came from the clearing. Glover was growling without any attempt at concealment for the moment. Then the girl heard him grunt suddenly, and a strangled other noise. He dived down and thrashed about on the ground. He had stepped on something that squealed. He got to his feet again and came on, rumbling triumphantly.

A moment's pause in a semiclear space where pale moonlight shone down and but the most occasional of red speckles from the burning mission still penetrated. Glover came wading out of the jungle, bearing a burden. He set it upright, shaking it savagely as he did so.

“Here's a Sakai,” he rumbled. “I stepped on him. You can talk his talk. Those yellow devils will be trying to trail us in a minute. Tell him to lead us away or I'll gut him.”

The girl caught her breath. A little, naked, filthy Sakai shivered and moaned in Glover's grasp. A little, wizened man with a breechclout of ragged bark cloth tied about his middle. Wrinkled and white with some scabrous skin disease, with wood ashes in his air and smeared on his body, and shivering in abject and pitiful terror.

“Pa A'Gap!” cried the girl desperately. She fumbled for the uncouth syllables of Sênoi, Sakai talk, that would convey her meaning.

Shivering and moaning, and exactly like some wild thing that has been trapped and is helpless, the little Sakai heard her. He chattered a frightened agreement. Glover loosened his belt and snapped it about the savage's throat.

“Tell him if he tries to bolt I'll knife him,” he snarled again as the Sakai made to move off. “You hold onto me. Duck when you see me duck. Let Billups follow you.”

They moved off. It was desperately slow and it was horribly noisy, their travel through the jungle. They heard crashings behind them as Su Yang's followers dived into the undergrowth. The Chinese were enjoying this. Professional fighting men all, an affair of two men to kill and a woman to seize, with money as a reward for their effort, was calculated to make them as happy as a Kang-Tze river pirate ever hopes to be.

They tried to be silent when they were once in the jungle. But that was difficult indeed. And then they heard the noise that the hand-locked group of fugitives were making as they followed the scared little savage toward a game trail. The fugitives were moving faster than their pursuers, because their filthy little guide had eyes like a cat and terror to drive him on. But the Chinese came after them swiftly as they could force a way through the undergrowth. Still, as the jungle grew denser, that was not very fast.

VIII

THE fugitives reached the Sakai encampment just about at dawn, and it was not an especially inspiring sight. There were a dozen or so shelters, of the most temporary possible sort. Dried leaves clinging to the wattled walls. Reeking, acrid smoke hovering about from the fires in every hut. Fire, of course, is the one great luxury the little jungle folk have, and they curl themselves about the logs whose smoldering edges are pushed together in the middle of every hut, and they slumber happily in the partly cooled ashes. The jungle loomed all about the encampment, the taller trees rising above a blanket of foggy mist that filled the clearing.

When the three fugitives and Pa A'Gap came wearily out of the jungle path into the village there were three or four of the miserable little creatures shivering as they gazed out of the doors of the huts. Inside, there were others squatting by the fires, scratching themselves and exchanging querulous monosyllables. At sunrise the vitality of the Sakai is at its lowest ebb and all his faculties are at their least alert. Normally, they would have caught the clomp-clomp of boots on the trail a half mile off, and by this time each and every individual in the encampment would have melted into the jungle. Now, there was a shivering, startled stare, a hiccoughing grunt of alarm, and naked figures dashed wildly for cover.

Pa A'Gap called them back, his own voice quivering with terror. Glover's gun was in the middle of his spine, but the girl had reassured him in advance.

Half the village hesitated and paused in its flight. The other half dived into the jungle and vanished; only to be promptly soaked all over again by the condensed mist and dew of the foliage, and to have the wetness start them to itching like mad.

Those who halted in their flight remained poised in an attitude of alertness singularly like that of a wild animal. Little men, astoundingly gnarly and unattractive to look at, and almost incredibly naked. A breechclout of bark cloth is the tribal garment; but it is generally in the last stage of dilapidation and of much more service as a place to tuck in a wood knife and other odds and ends than as an aid to modesty. Of that quality, anyhow, the Sakai have none.

“These gobs,” explained Pa A'Gap in a trembling voice, “are friends.”

The headman of the encampment inspected them timorously. He observed a trickle of tobacco juice on Pa A'Gap's chin. The headman further observed that Pa A'Gap was unharmed. Glover had taken off the belt five minutes before, at the girl's suggestion.

“What do they want?” asked the headman anxiously.

The girl interposed, fumbling for the clumsy monosyllables of Sênoi. The headman recognized her. She was the daughter of that gob, that alien, that non-Sakai, who had paid the Sakai rock salt and trade tobacco for listening to him speaking strange things in a loud voice. That gob, also, had raised marvelous quantities of food which he shared with the Sakai.

The favorable impression of the headman became strengthened. He scratched a hairy, scaly leg meditatively against its hairy, scaly fellow. He was moved by no sensation of gratitude, of course. People whose bellies are forever empty—and no Sakai has had a full stomach for generations—do not cultivate the gentler emotions. But the headman's mouth watered, it literally drooled at the thought of trade tobacco.

Glover, scowling, flung a handful as one might fling a bone to a dog. The tension eased. Little, naked, verminous men drifted inch by inch back into the encampment.

Glover went into the hut nearest him. He came out with a cooking pot full of some unappetizing mess. He looked at the girl and she shook her head. He fell to eating it between yawns. He had had no sleep to speak of for two nights, now.

A LONG discussion full of lengthy pauses was taking place between the girl and Billups, on one hand, and the headman and a group of his more venerable subjects. Glover especially noted one ancient Sakai. His face was tatooed in blue and was full of an intricate network of tiny wrinkles. He was watching as the headman filled a bamboo pipe and lighted it. This other Sakai was old and skinny, and the ashes of many months of luxurious sleeping in the beds of dead fires were worked thoroughly into the creases of his skin and into his hair. But he watched, dribbling, as the headman puffed the reeking pipe.

Glover contemptuously tossed him tobacco and scowled when the wizened little man beamed in the ultimate of bliss. He looked extraordinarily monkeylike when he grinned.

The discussion took an unhappy turn. The wrinkled little headman got out querulous, frightened monosyllables. The girl reassured him tiredly. He clacked an order over his shoulder, and the encampment was instantly in a fever of activity. The women were packing up their possessions—mostly babies and cooking pots—and the men were hastily gathering together their weapons and the supply of food at hand. The last was little enough, in all conscience.

The encampment began to be evacuated in haste. Glover rumbled angrily. He stood up, dropping his bowl of food.

“What in hell!” he said furiously. “You're letting the little vermin get away?”

“Of course,” said Billups sharply. “Those Chinks will be tracking us, and they can do it well enough on account of our boots. They'd kill some of the little savages just for fun.”

“I'll catch a few women,” growled Glover.

Billups' expression became contemptuous and stern.

“Touch one and I'll drill you!” he snarled. “I've stood about all I'm going to stand from you, anyhow!”

Glover stared in utter, blank unbelief of his own ears. Billups had stood all he was going to stand from him! When Glover had saved his life in the first place, and had had to tie his hands to keep him from ruining everything, and...

“Why, you damned fool!” said Glover, in a surging tide of anger. “I——”

“You'll leave the Sakai women alone!” snapped Billups in a desperate savagery, coupled with conscious virtue and a splendid heroic wrath. “It's your kind of scum who spoils the East for white men!”

Glover snarled.

“My kind of scum!” raged. Then once more he fought down his wrath. “I'm going to take the lousy wenches for hostages,” he roared. “Tell the Sakai that they're to take their blowguns and pot the Chinks from the jungle, one by one, as they're trailing us. Tell 'em we'll cut the women's throats if they don't.”

That idea, if not notably pure ethics, was assuredly sound strategy. It was the one single threat which would send the little jungle folk desperately to their separate ambushes with their deadly little blowguns ready. Timid past belief, the Sakai have yet their own private affections. On that threat they would have sent the deadly small darts flicking silently into the trailing party Su Yang led. They would have wiped out all danger to the three fugitives. And then, on receiving their women back, they would have fled in the uttermost of panic to the remotest and most isolated spot in all the jungle which covers Malaysia like a blanket. Because the blowgun darts could not be used against Glover and Billups. It takes some time for a man to die of ipoh poisoning, and with hostages in line, Glover could have killed every one of them after being struck and before he died. Which he would have done. Which the Sakai would have known. Which would have made them assail the Chinese by preference.

It was sound strategy, but it was not pure ethics. So Billups said sternly,

“Touch one of them and I'll kill you! If I've got to be killed, at least I can die as a gentleman.”

Billups, you see, felt safe. He was many miles from the spot where he had last seen the Chinese. And he had a guide to take him farther. And there was a girl listening, a girl in whose eyes—both for economic and biological reasons—he wished to shine.

He glanced at her now, and she was gazing admiringly at him. So he said grimly:

“That's about of a piece with the rest of your planning, Glover. You've got a beastly sort of a mind, and a beastly way of acting. I don't trust you, and I've got Alice to look after. I'm not going to take any more risks. We separate here.”

Glover stared. His shoulders were stooping a little. His face was becoming deadly, menacing.

“I haven't forgotten,” said Billups harshly—Billups, by the way, had his revolver entirely ready in his hand. “I haven't forgotten one thing you did. You kissed Alice. I'd kill you for that now, but Alice has asked me to spare you. But I won't risk having you about any more. Not that I'm afraid of you! I'm not afraid of you! But I've no fancy for being killed in my sleep, and leaving Alice at your mercy. There's not much doubt of how a man of your stamp would act. So we separate. Here. Now. You go your way and we go ours. You've got as much chance as we have to get clear. I'm letting you off this easily because we're all three possibly near to death.”

This was distinctly a reasonable and on the whole a rather generous speech. If there was a certain irony in not trusting Glover with the girl alone, when it was Glover's acceptance of a deadly risk for her protection that had started all the fighting, Billups was innocent of ironic intent. He was acting in the best tradition of the merchant marine and English fair play, and various other estimable codes.

“You'll do that, eh?” raged Glover. “You? Why, you bloody damned fool, I've kept her safe so far in spite of you! And before I'll trust her to a swine, a lousy coward....”

With a roar, he charged. His plunge was sudden. Billups fired shakenly and the bullet went wild. The little Sakai melted instantly into the jungle and from its edge watched, shaking, the extraordinarily short mêlée that followed.

IT WAS short. The smoke of Billups' shot almost scorched Glover's face. Billups leaped back for room to aim another bullet, and the girl flung herself desperately in Glover's path, her face chalky at the murder she saw in his expression, clinging to his arms, trying desperately to wind herself about him, struggling frantically to keep him from killing Billups.

And Glover worked brutally to break his hold. Brutally, that is, to all seeming. Billups, afterward, carefully never pointed out that Glover could have broken her most frenzied grip with a single blow of his fist. But for perhaps ten, perhaps fifteen seconds she succeeded in holding him, snarling and roaring profanely, away from Billups. In that time Billups had raised his revolver for a second shot, had found he could not be sure of hitting Glover and missing the girl, and darted swiftly behind Glover.

There, with science and skill, he brought down the barrel of his revolver with terrific force upon Glover's head. And Glover bellowed and staggered, and abruptly collapsed.

He remained unconscious for possibly five minutes, in which time things moved swiftly. When he opened his eyes again to snarl, he was tied hand and foot with rattan cordage, the evacuation of the village was complete and Billups was regarding him with a truly splendid calm.

“I'm glad you've come to,” said Billups severely. “I've left you tied up, of course, but you ought to be able to get yourself loose in half an hour or so. I'm leaving your revolver with you. When you get clear, you'll have exactly an even chance with me.”

Glover spat an epithet at him that would have stung the hide of a rhinoceros. Billups bit his lip.

“You can say what you please, of course,” he said coldly. “You're helpless, and I shan't harm you. I know pretty well everything about you now. You came up to kidnap Alice——”

“You damned lousy swine——!” snarled Glover, beginning to draw upon all his knowledge of expletive to try and make Billups mad enough to turn him loose to to fight.

“You must have heard of her inheritance,” said Billups grimly. “You came up with those men, and on finding Alice's father dead you realized that you were able to kidnap her alone. And you tried to chuck your partners out. It may be, too—” Billups flushed with anger—“that you fancied you could force her to marry you. I've settled all that. You're lucky I'm letting you off like this. Now listen to me! Maybe I won't get out of this alive, and maybe you won't either, but if I ever run across you again, anywhere, at any time, I'm going to settle with you in full! I'm letting you off now. But next time we meet, God help you!”

He strode grandly out of Glover's line of sight. Glover caught one glimpse of the girl moving to join him, and he saw her regarding him doubtfully, and unhappily. But, among other biological laws that make human relationships more complicated than they should be, there is a law which enables a girl, for a certain short time, to believe absolutely anything she is told by the man whom another biological law makes her love.

The girl went down the trail after Billups and the two filthy little Sakai men who had been bribed by lavish promises to guide them to a Malay village. It is probable that she did not altogether credit Glover with all the criminal intentions Billups assigned him, and it may be that for a fleeting moment or so she was dubious about the heroism of Billups in knocking Glover unconscious from behind. But various laws would take care of that—in time.

Glover, though, had no source of illusions. He cursed himself hoarse while he writhed in his bonds. He knew that Su Yang's companions would be on the trail with the earliest patch of dawn light. He knew that a clear trail, impossible to miss, led straight to this spot. And when a man like Su Yang comes upon a man he hates, say, like Glover, and the hated man is bound hand and foot and helpless, it is a biological law that the bound man is going to be uncomfortable. Su Yang would take just as much time to kill Glover as he felt he could spare from the further pursuit of Billups and the girl. Say, half an hour. But a man who spends even half an hour dying of fire, or having his bones broken, one by one, or being slowly and delicately sliced to shreds....

GLOVER worked desperately to free himself. The bonds were tight. Horribly tight. Tied by a seaman; a veritable officer of the merchant marine, no less. And ten minutes went by. Fifteen minutes. The knots were tighter than at the beginning. Glover cursed horribly. He knew ropes and roping as well as the next man. These knots would not come loose.

Billups, in all probability, had assured himself that he wished Glover to escape. But Billups had not wished Glover to escape too promptly, or he would follow and try to kill somebody. So Billups had had to make a very fine balance between knots which it would be difficult to escape from, and knots which it would be impossible to escape from. And, undoubtedly, he had slightly overestimated Glover's powers of escape. Let us call it that. It is almost certainly the truth. So—let us call it that.

In any event Glover knew that he was left helpless for Su Yang to find.

The jungle loomed above him silent and aloof. Little things slithered and crawled about on the fallen jungle leaves. Lithe things clambered and swung in the branches.

It seemed to Glover that he heard a single sound. A syllable, it might be, of the tonal Suchin Chinese his erstwhile followers used. That one syllable was muted and separated from all its fellows. It was very faint, but it told him much.

Suddenly, with an incredible expenditure of energy, Glover hunched his shoulders. With a horrible effort, he moved his body perhaps an inch and a half along the ground. Grunting, he tried it again. And again. He panted; he gasped. When he caught his breath, he cursed. But he moved, with a terrible and exhausting slowness, toward one of the strictly temporary shelters of the Sakai encampment.

He heard no more sounds which might have been Su Yang's party. Not any indications whatever. Which said nothing. They were trailing. They would not wish to make much noise.

His head smote on a floor log. His hair burrowed among ashes; in dirt that was undoubtedly full of the vermin the little Sakai tolerate as brothers in degradation. Acrid, strangling wood smoke choked him.

When at last the smoldering coals scorched his wrists, he was panting in great gasps, in sobbing breaths, from the struggle to cover possibly thirty feet of ground. And then he shut his teeth to keep back groans. Because rattan cordage is strong; and it is flexible, especially when green; and it is very convenient indeed. But it burns slowly, infinitely so.

But of course Glover broke clear. Of course. He snapped the scorched bands of rattan, and portions of the seared flesh of his wrists broke off with the bonds. And he tore away the lines about his legs, and he picked up his revolver and crammed the extra shells into his pockets. And he snarled.

Billups was on ahead. He could follow him. And Su Yang was behind. He could waylay him. Or he could simply step aside, simply step magnificently aside, and let Su Yang and his fellow ex-river pirates follow down the clear trail Billups was leaving, until they reached and killed Billups.

Billups would leave him for Su Yang to find? He would!

Glover snarled rather horribly, cursing shrilly to himself in the midst of the vast, incurious jungle trees. '

“By God!” he raged. “He called me scum! Me! Me! And I'm a gentleman, by God! I'm a gentleman! And I'll prove it!”

He looked at his revolver. The chambers of the cylinder were full. Snarling unutterable, unprintable, unthinkable things, he plunged into the jungle path. He looked to be in the mood to kill.

He was.

IX

THAT ends the story, of course. Nobody knows what happened in the jungle path. Abject little Sakai who were scuttling through the jungle, with all their earthly possessions on their backs, heard shooting, some ten minutes later. It lasted a long time. It was heavy at first. Then it became lighter. Then it grew lighter still, and the sound of occasional shots moved swiftly as if someone was fleeing and someone else was pursuing. And then it stopped.

But nobody knows the details of that shooting. Glover never told. The Sakai, to a man, deny fearfully that they know anything about it. And Billups knows nothing about it. And the girl, of course, knows nothing. Even Gow Lee, much as he hates Glover these days, does not know exactly what happened to Su Yang and a small body of very useful ex-river pirates who went up-country to Khilit and never came back again.

And Billups, of course, married the girl. They are very happy, one understands, and sometimes Billups can be persuaded to tell the story of how he won his bride. There are certain omissions in his tale which his hearers understand perfectly to be due to dislike of self-praise. They generally shudder at the description of Glover. Glover seems to be a person utterly without redeeming qualities. And it is rumored that at first Mrs. Billups looked slightly uncomfortable when Glover was described by her husband.

But latterly she listens quite untroubled. She confirms by silence at any rate, the singularly vicious characterization Billups gives him. Which is as well.

His story, though, never describes the conversation around the campfire the night after they left Glover tied up. The girl was very silent, gazing into the fire. Disturbed. Unhappy. Distrait. Billups stared at her. He thought he saw tears. And a sudden uncomfortable suspicion, an ugly thought, came into Billups' head. Nothing else could account for her unhappiness now, safe, and going down to the coast to be married to him.

“I say, Alice,” he said suddenly, his voice harsh in spite of himself. “That chap Glover——”

She looked up silently.

“Was he ever— Dammit! Was he—” He swallowed, and blurted out the question. “Was he ever—impertinent?”

She gazed into the fire. Perhaps she thought of his having kissed her. Twice. Savagely. Desperately. Defiantly.

“I—don't think he ever—meant to be impertinent,” she said slowly.

Billups frowned over the answer. He opened his mouth to press the point. But he changed his mind and said importantly:

“I wanted to know. A man of that class...” And so he dismissed the matter for all time. Quite definitely.

And Billups never mentions that conversation.

BUT Glover ... Well, Glover got down to Singapore a couple of months later, rather fagged out and with some half healed bullet wounds and signs of fever on him. Broke to the world, of course and utterly friendless. Nobody had any use for him, and he gradually reached approximately the status of a beachcomber. Cadging drinks here and there ... And when Glover sank to cadging drinks in Singapore, of course he was finished. In Singapore, you understand, a man may be not only down and out, but through. Glover was through when even Gow Lee would not stake him any longer; and after the affair up Khilit way, Gow Lee spread out his hands indifferently. If for a moment his eyes raged, his face did not change, nor did his speech. He simply would never again use Captain Glover for any of the gun runnings, smugglings or assorted illicit enterprises he might have on hand. And since Gow Lee was the last man who had any use for Glover, when Gow Lee deserted him he was finished.

For a sample, well ... One night he was cadging drinks in Ryan's place in Singapore—where surely men are not particular—and somebody brought the second mate of the Camden Town over to him.

“Are you the man they call Captain Bill Glover?” asked the second mate coldly. The second mate had had only a couple of drinks, and he looked spruce and trim and very fresh cheeked and wholesome—even in Ryan's place in Singapore. “Are you the man they call Captain Bill Glover?” he demanded again. “Were you up Khilit way a few months ago?”

Glover looked up scowling from where he sat by a glass that somebody else had paid for. Never humble, Glover, even when he was cadging drinks. He'd frown and scowl when he asked for them. But somehow people gave them to him.

“Yes,” he snapped. “What of it?”

“You lousy, rotten bum!” said the second mate of the Camden Town, doubling his fists and swinging with an unholy joy at Glover's face. “Billups was on my ship, and I've been hoping to meet you just to bash your damned face in!”

The fist grazed Glover's skull. He'd dodged from pure instinct. Then he stood up and on the instant was cold sober. And he beat the second mate of the Camden Town until two men had to carry him down to the boat landing, to be put on board. And then he sat down again with people looking at him queerly, and finished his drink, and presently was cadging them again....

This story, you see, should never be printed, because it proves that right and justice and praiseworthy young men do not always triumph in this world. Or maybe it proves something else. But, in any event, it should not be printed, because its moral is depressing. Consider: Its moral is that virtue is its own reward.