Hallo! what the dickens now?"

For a couple of scantily clad Malay girls, their sarongs torn and ragged
with forcing their way through the bushes, came panting up, uttering
loud cries, and, flinging themselves down at the astonished youths'
feet, clung to their legs, while Yusuf began to abuse them angrily, and
kicking one, was about to thrust away the other with his foot.

"You leave them alone, will you?" said Bob, giving him a rap on the head
with his gun-barrel. "I wish to goodness I knew what was the Malay for
_cowardly beast_, and you should have it, young fellow."

The Malay's hand flew to his kris as he threw down the birds, and it
flashed in the sunshine directly.

"Ah! would you bite?" cried Bob, presenting his gun at the other's
breast, when the man shrank away, with his eyes half-closed, and a
peculiarly tigerish aspect about him as he drew his lips from his white
teeth, but kept at a respectful distance, knowing as he did how ably the
young sailor could use his gun.

Just then the girls renewed their cries and lamentations, clinging
wildly to the youths as if for protection, as half-a-dozen Malays, armed
with krises and the long limbings, or spears, that they can use with
such deadly force, came running up, and made as if to seize upon the two
girls.

"Keep off, will you! Confound your impudence, what do you mean?" roared
Bob, slewing round his gun to face the newcomers. "I say, Tom, what
fools we do seem not to be able to speak this stupid lingo! What are
they jabbering about?"

"Hang me, if I know," said Tom, whose face was flushed with heat and
excitement. "All I can make out is that they want these two Malay
ladies who have come to us to protect them."

"Then, as my old nurse used to say, `want will be their master,'" said
Bob, angrily; "for they're not going to have them."

The leader of the Malay party volubly said something to the two English,
and then said some angry words to the two girls, who clung more tightly
to their protectors, as he caught each by her shoulder.

Bob brought the barrel of his gun down heavily on the Malay's head, in
the same fashion as he had served Yusuf, who was now missing, having
suddenly glided away.

The Malay leaped back, tore out his kris, and made at his assailant; but
the presented barrels of the two guns kept him back, as they did his
companions, who had presented their limbings as their leader drew his
kris, while now the girls leaped bravely up