could not let us pass the
barrier, because we should be pursued. He doesn't like fights. He gave
me to understand that he would shoot me with my own revolver without
any sort of compunction, rather than risk a rude and distasteful
contest with the strange barbarians for my sake. He has preached to the
villagers. They respect him. He is the most remarkable man they have
ever seen, and their kinsman by marriage. They understand his policy.
And anyway only women and children and a few old fellows are left in the
village. This is the season when the men are away in trading vessels.
But it would have been all the same. None of them have a taste for
fighting--and with white men too! They are peaceable, kindly folk and
would have seen me shot with extreme satisfaction. Wang seemed to think
my insistence--for I insisted, you know--very stupid and tactless. But a
drowning man clutches at straws. We were talking in such Malay as we are
both equal to.

"'Your fears are foolish,' I said to him.

"'Foolish? of course I am foolish,' he replied. 'If I were a wise man,
I would be a merchant with a big hong in Singapore, instead of being a
mine coolie turned houseboy. But if you don't go away in time, I will
shoot you before it grows too dark to take aim. Not till then, Number
One, but I will do it then. Now--finish!'

"'All right,' I said. 'Finish as far as I am concerned; but you can have
no objections to the mem putih coming over to stay with the Orang Kaya's
women for a few days. I will make a present in silver for it.' Orang
Kaya, is the head man of the village, Lena," added Heyst.

She looked at him in astonishment.

"You wanted me to go to that village of savages?" she gasped. "You
wanted me to leave you?"

"It would have given me a freer hand."

Heyst stretched out his hands and looked at them for a moment, then let
them fall by his side. Indignation was expressed more in the curve of
her lips than in her clear eyes, which never wavered.

"I believe Wang laughed," he went on. "He made a noise like a
turkey-cock."

"'That would be worse than anything,' he told me.

"I was taken aback. I pointed out to him that he was talking nonsense.
It could not make any difference to his security where you were, because
the evil men, as he calls them, did not know of your existence. I did
not lie exactly, Lena, though I did stretch the truth till it cracked;
but the fellow seems to have an uncanny insight. He shook his head. He
a