.

"They would all say the risk is too great. They would lose their lives
if discovered."

"Then what is to be done?" cried Bob.

Ali stood thinking for a few moments in silence, and then he looked
frankly from one to the other.

"I will go myself," he said.

The two young men stared at him.

"You?" they exclaimed in one breath. "Why, just now you said the risk
was too great."

"That the men would lose their lives!" cried Bob Roberts.

"If they were discovered!" exclaimed Tom Long.

"Yes," said Ali, quietly, and he smiled back in their astonished faces.

"And yet you would run that risk?" said Bob Roberts.

"Yes: why not?"

"But for us?"

"Is one's life to be devoted to oneself?" said Ali calmly. "I am not as
you are. You are Christians. I am a follower of the prophet. We call
you dogs and giaours. You look upon us with contempt. But men are but
men, the whole world over, and it seems to me that one's life cannot be
better spent than in trying to do good to one's friends."

"But," said Tom Long, "you would be fighting against your friends, the
Malays."

"No," said Ali, mournfully. "I should be fighting for them in doing
anything that would free them from the rule of idle sensualists and
pirates."

"I tell you what," cried Bob Roberts, enthusiastically, "we'll whop old
Hamet and Rajah Gantang out of their skins, and you shall be sultan
instead, or your father first and you afterwards."

Ali's eyes flashed as he turned them upon the speaker.

"You could be chief banjo, you know," said Bob.

"Chief--banjo?" said Ali, wonderingly.

"No, no; I mean gong--Tumongong," cried Bob.

"Oh, yes," said Ali, smiling. "But no, no: that is a dream. Let us be
serious. One of your people could not go, it would be impossible; but I
am a Malay, and if I dress myself as a common man--a slave--I could
follow where the hunting-party went, and find out all you want to know."

"No, no," cried Bob, earnestly, "I should not like that."

"Like what, Mr Roberts?" said a voice that made them start; and turning
sharply, they saw Captain Smithers standing by them, with Lieutenant
Johnson.

"Mr Ali here wants to dress up as a common Malay, sir, and go as a spy
to get news of the hunting-party."

"It would be excellent," cried the lieutenant. "Mr Ali, you would
confer a lasting favour upon us."

"But have you thought of the risk?" said Captain Smithers.

"I have thought of everything," said the young man,