rise, but his strength was gone, and he had only time
to throw himself over and get his hands at liberty, as his pursuer threw
himself down upon him, clutched him by the throat, and, raising his
kris, was about to plunge it into the prostrate young man's breast.

But Ali was too quick. In spite of his weakness and the suffocating
sensation caused by his position, he made a snatch at the descending
arm, caught it, and stopped the blow, and then they both lay there
panting and exhausted, chaser and chased, unable to do more than gaze
into each other's eyes, as the jungle now began to grow lighter, and Ali
could see the gleam of the deadly kris just above his head.

They were terrible moments; the oppression was so great that he could
hardly breathe, and at the same time he felt himself growing weaker and
weaker. There was the baleful glare of his enemy's eyes, and the gleam
of the kris growing each moment nearer, and he powerless to arrest it.
Only a few moments, and in spite of his brave resistance all would be
over, and those he sought to save would be lost.

The thought of the friends at the residency nerved him to the final
effort, and with a wild cry he drew himself up, and tried to throw his
enemy from his chest--his enemy, whose eyes and weapon glared down at
him so, and summoning all his strength, he felt that he had succeeded.

Panting heavily, Ali started up, but the gleam was about him still, for
the bright rays of the morning sun were shining down through the attap
roof, and with a moan of misery he sank back once more on finding that
he had been overcome by weariness, and that this last painful episode
was only a dream.

And his friends that he meant to save--what of them? Ali lay back and
closed his eyes, for his misery seemed greater than he could bear.

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN.

HOW ALI MADE A DASH FOR LIBERTY.

As Ali lay back there with closed eyes, it seemed impossible that he
could have slept and dreamed all this, but it was plain enough now. He
had but to unclose his eyes and see the Malays in the outer room, and
listen to the twittering of the small birds, the screams of the parrots,
and the cry uttered from time to time by some monkey.

Where was his manhood? he asked himself--where his keen desire to escape
and help his friends? He felt half-maddened to think that he should
have slept and neglected them, not sparing himself for a moment, and
never once palliating what he called his c