of the cicada hardly attracted our
attention; while the whistle and crash of a monkey that was inspecting
us from his perch among the trees above caused me to peer upward,
in hopes of catching a glimpse of his grayish outlines.

I had not had an opportunity of asking my companion for the details
of his tragic story. I turned to him, and found him watching me
attentively. "Were you listening to the call of the coo-ee?" he asked.

"Yes," I answered.

"It is the queen of birds. I will get you one. I have never shot
one. They only come out at night, and then only to disappear, but we
can trap them. It will die in captivity. That is why Solomon could
not keep them, and sent for new ones every three years."

"What became of the woman?" I asked.

"The body of the Laksamana was thrown over the walls by the
Portuguese," he said moodily. "It was embalmed and laid away. Two
months from that day the woman was walking outside the walls. The war
was over. There was no more gold. Three of my people sprang upon her
and the Portuguese she was to marry." He paused for a moment and looked
up at the stars, then went on in a cold, matter-of-fact tone. "They
were lashed to the headless body of the man they had murdered, and
thrown into the royal tiger-cage, by order of his Highness, Ali,
Sultan of Maur."

I raised my curtain and threw the stub of my cigar out into the
darkness, a smothered exclamation of horror escaping my lips.

"It was the will of Allah. Good night."

It was nearly nine o'clock the next morning before we started. Our
Malays had gone on at daybreak, to cut a path up the base of the
mountain to where the open forest began.

We ascended steadily up a moderate slope for several miles, keeping
the ravine on our left. It was comparatively easy work after we had
left the jungle behind. After crossing a level plateau we once more
found ourselves in a forest so dense that our men had to use their
parangs again. The heat of the jungle was intense, and we suffered
severely from the stings of a fly that is not unlike a cicada in shape.

From the jungle we emerged into an immense stone field,--padang-batu,
the Malays called it. It extended along the mountain side as far
as we could see, in places quite bare, at others deeply fissured
and covered with a most luxuriant vegetation. We tramped at times
waist deep through ferns, some green, some dark red, and some lined
with yellow, clumps of the splendid Dipteris Horsfieldi an