It does not run warm as mine does
when I hold you to me."

I tried to pacify her, but she would not be satisfied.

"You do not love me! You cannot love me!" she repeated. "They want me
to give you to the snake god. Why should I keep you if you do not love
me?"

This was the first time she had threatened me, and I began to realize
that the love she professed was tempered by a degree of venom which at
any moment might consign me to some cruel death.

Surely no man was placed in such a dilemma as that in which I now found
myself. In all my adventures I had never felt so helpless as I did when
dealing with this wilful queen. I dared not tell her of my love for
Anna Holstein, for I knew that such a confession would quickly seal my
doom. Yet I could not return her love, for Anna was never out of my
thoughts. Meanwhile Ackbau watched us closely, content to bide his
time.

The people upon this island were unlike any I had previously met with.
I conjectured that in ages past some tribe of Indians had migrated to
it, for that Indian blood flowed in the veins of its present
inhabitants seemed beyond doubt. Their intelligence exceeded that of
aborigines, and their language contained words of Hindu origin. As for
the queen, I set her down for a Portuguese maiden, whose mother must
have accompanied the captain of some trading vessel, probably in search
of the Island of Gems, when, by a stroke of fate, the ship, with all
hands, had foundered, leaving Melannie the sole survivor.

Ackbau seldom spoke to me, and when he did his tone was unfriendly.
"The white man will make good sport at the coming of the snake god," he
said to me once when I had angered him by walking out with the queen,
and those with him had laughed, and had looked at me in a manner that
made me speculate upon what cruel fate it was to which they, in their
own minds, had already consigned me.

Of the tortures practised by the islanders upon those who offended
them, I was not left long in doubt. There had lately been a war, so
Melannie told me, between this people and those of an adjacent island
in which some captives had been taken who, according to custom, would
be offered in sacrifice to propitiate one of the many evil spirits whom
these benighted people worship. On the day of the sacrifice I was
bidden to be present, and not daring to refuse, I accompanied the queen
to a barren spot at the foot of the mountain where some gaunt trees
rose out of a bed of lav