Jelik sprang to his feet. "Nay, why shouldst thou covet my one gift from
the white man? Is not the net he gave thee worth twenty such guns as the
one he hath given me?"

Jinaban leapt at his brother's throat, and for a minute or two they
struggled fiercely; then Jelik fell with a groan, for Jinaban stabbed
him in the throat twice. Then seizing the rifle and two bags of
cartridges he sallied out into the village. Behind him, panting with
rage, ran his murdered brother's wife, a young woman of twenty years
of age. She carried an infant in her arms, and was running swiftly,
clutching in her right hand a short dagger.

"Stand, thou coward, Jinaban!" she called, setting the child down in the
path--"stand, thou coward, for though thou hast slain my husband thou
shalt not rob me of that which was his--give me back the gun."

Jinaban laughed fiercely, and his white teeth flashed from his
black-bearded lips; he slipped some cartridges into the rifle. He waited
till the woman was within ten yards of him, then raised the weapon and
shot her dead. And now, his tiger nature aroused to the full, he sprang
into the middle of the village square of Ailap, and began firing at
every person he saw, sparing neither age nor sex. His second brother,
Rao, a courageous young man, seizing the only weapon available--a
seaman's cutlass--rushed forth from his house and, calling upon Jinaban
to lay down his weapon, advanced towards him. Pretending to consent--for
a cartridge had jammed and the rifle would not work--Jinaban held out
the butt to Rao in token of surrender; then the moment Rao grasped it,
he sprang at his throat and bore him to the ground, and, tearing the
cutlass from his hand, he plunged it through and through the prostrate
man's body. Then, with a savage threat against the whole of the murdered
men's families, he turned and fled towards the beach. Dragging a light
canoe down into the water, he sprang into it, and pushed off just as
Palmer appeared on the scene, and, raising his revolver, fired six shots
at the escaping murderer. None of the shots, however, took effect,
and Jinaban, with an oath of vengeance against the white man, paddled
swiftly away and reached the low, densely wooded and uninhabited island
on the western side of the lagoon.

This for two years had now been his lair. Paddling over at dead of night
from time to time, he would stalk, rifle in hand, through the village,
and, entering any house he pleased, demand f