and Lalaperu was overhauling the packs and opening tins of
provisions. Tudor, having pulled through the fever and started to

mend, was still frightfully weak and very much starved. So badly
swollen was he from mosquito-bites that his face was

unrecognizable, and the acceptance of his identity was largely a
matter of faith. Joan had her own ointments along, and she

prefaced their application by fomenting his swollen features with
hot cloths. Sheldon, with an eye to the camp and the preparations

for the night, looked on and felt the pangs of jealousy at every
contact of her hands with Tudor's face and body. Somehow, engaged

in their healing ministrations, they no longer seemed to him boy's
hands, the hands of Joan who had gazed at Gogoomy's head with pale

cheeks sprayed with angry flame. The hands were now a woman's
hands, and Sheldon grinned to himself as his fancy suggested that

some night he must lie outside the mosquito-netting in order to
have Joan apply soothing fomentations in the morning.

CHAPTER XXV--THE HEAD-HUNTERS
The morning's action had been settled the night before. Tudor was

to stay behind in his banyan refuge and gather strength while the
expedition proceeded. On the far chance that they might rescue

even one solitarysurvivor of Tudor's party, Joan was fixed in her
determination to push on; and neither Sheldon nor Tudor could

persuade her to remain quietly at the banyan tree while Sheldon
went on and searched. With Tudor, Adamu Adam and Arahu were to

stop as guards, the latter Tahitian being selected to remain
because of a bad foot which had been brought about by stepping on

one of the thorns concealed by the bushmen. It was evidently a
slow poison, and not too strong, that the bushmen used, for the

wounded Poonga-Poonga man was still alive, and though his swollen
shoulder was enormous, the inflammation had already begun to go

down. He, too, remained with Tudor.
Binu Charley led the way, by proxy, however, for, by means of the

poisoned spear, he drove the captive bushman ahead. The run-way
still ran through the dank and rottenjungle, and they knew no

villages would be encountered till rising ground was gained. They
plodded on, panting and sweating in the humid, stagnant air. They

were immersed in a sea of wanton, prodigalvegetation. All about
them the huge-rooted trees blocked their footing, while coiled and

knotted climbers, of the girth of a man's arm, were thrown from
lofty branch to lofty branch, or hung in tangled masses like so

many monstrous snakes. Lush-stalked plants, larger-leaved than the
body of a man, exuded a sweaty moisture from all their surfaces.

Here and there, banyan trees, like rocky islands, shouldered aside
the streaming riot of vegetation between their crowded columns,

showing portals and passages wherein all daylight was lost and only
midnight gloom remained. Tree-ferns and mosses and a myriad other

parasitic forms jostled with gay-coloured fungoid growths for room
to live, and the very atmosphere itself seemed to afford clinging

space to airy fairy creepers, light and delicate as gem-dust,
tremulous with microscopic blooms. Pale-golden and vermilion

orchids flaunted their unhealthy blossoms in the golden, dripping
sunshine that filtered through the matted roof. It was the

mysterious, evil forest, a charnel house of silence, wherein naught
moved save strange tiny birds--the strangeness of them making the

mystery more profound, for they flitted on noiseless wings,
emitting neither song nor chirp, and they were mottled with morbid

colours, having all the seeming of orchids, flying blossoms of
sickness and decay.

He was caught by surprise, fifteen feet in the air above the path,
in the forks of a many-branched tree. All saw him as he dropped

like a shadow, naked as on his natal morn, landing springily on his
bent knees, and like a shadow leaping along the run-way. It was

hard for them to realize that it was a man, for he seemed a weird
jungle spirit, a goblin of the forest. Only Binu Charley was not

perturbed. He flung his poisoned spear over the head of the
captive at the flitting form. It was a mighty cast, well intended,

but the shadow, leaping, received the spear harmlessly between the
legs, and, tripping upon it, was flung sprawling. Before he could

get away, Binu Charley was upon him, clutching him by his snow-
white hair. He was only a young man, and a dandy at that, his face

blackened with charcoal, his hair whitened with wood-ashes, with
the freshly severed tail of a wild pig thrust through his

perforated nose, and two more thrust through his ears. His only
other ornament was a necklace of human finger-bones. At sight of

their other prisoner he chattered in a high querulous falsetto,
with puckered brows and troubled, wild-animal eyes. He was

disposed of along the middle of the line, one of the Poonga-Poonga
men leading him at the end of a length of bark-rope.

The trail began to rise out of the jungle, dipping at times into
festering hollows of unwholesome vegetation, but rising more and

more over swelling, unseen hill-slopes or climbing steep hog-backs
and rocky hummocks where the forest thinned and blue patches of sky

appeared overhead.
"Close up he stop," Binu Charley warned them in a whisper.

Even as he spoke, from high overhead came the deep resonant boom of
a village drum. But the beat was slow, there was no panic in the

sound. They were directly beneath the village, and they could hear
the crowing of roosters, two women's voices raised in brief

dispute, and, once, the crying of a child. The run-way now became
a deeply worn path, rising so steeply that several times the party

paused for breath. The path never widened, and in places the feet
and the rains of generations had scoured it till it was sunken

twenty feet beneath the surface.
"One man with a rifle could hold it against a thousand," Sheldon

whispered to Joan. "And twenty men could hold it with spears and
arrows."

They came out on the village, situated on a small, upland plateau,
grass-covered, and with only occasional trees. There was a wild

chorus of warning cries from the women, who scurried out of the
grass houses, and like frightened quail dived over the opposite

edge of the clearing, gathering up their babies and children as
they ran. At the same time spears and arrows began to fall among

the invaders. At Sheldon's command, the Tahitians and Poonga-
Poonga men got into action with their rifles. The spears and

arrows ceased, the last bushman disappeared, and the fight was over
almost as soon as it had begun. On their own side no one had been

hurt, while half a dozen bushmen had been killed. These alone
remained, the wounded having been carried off. The Tahitians and

Poonga-Poonga men had warmed up and were for pursuit, but this
Sheldon would not permit. To his pleased surprise, Joan backed him

up in the decision; for, glancing at her once during the firing, he
had seen her white face, like a glittering sword in its fighting

intensity, the nostrils dilated, the eyes bright and steady and
shining.

"Poor brutes," she said. "They act only according to their
natures. To eat their kind and take heads is good morality for

them."
"But they should be taught not to take white men's heads," Sheldon

argued.
She nodded approval, and said, "If we find one head we'll burn the

village. Hey, you, Charley! What fella place head he stop?"
"S'pose he stop along devil-devil house," was the answer. "That

big fella house, he devil-devil."
It was the largest house in the village, ambitiously ornamented

with fancy-plaited mats and king-posts carved into obscene and
monstrous forms half-human and half-animal. Into it they went, in

the obscure light stumbling across the sleeping-logs of the village
bachelors and knocking their heads against strings of weird votive-

offerings, dried and shrivelled, that hung from the roof-beams. On
either side were rude gods, some grotesquely carved, others no more