file and that turned and twisted with endless convolutions through

the dense undergrowth. For the most part it was a silent forest,
lush and dank, where only occasionally a wood-pigeon cooed or snow-

white cockatoos laughed harshly in laborious flight.
Here, in the mid-morning, the first casualty occurred. Binu

Charley had dropped behind for a time, and Koogoo, the Poonga-
Poonga man who had boasted that he would eat the bushmen, was in

the lead. Joan and Sheldon heard the twanging thrum and saw Koogoo
throw out his arms, at the same time dropping his rifle, stumble

forward, and sink down on his hands and knees. Between his naked
shoulders, low down and to the left, appeared the bone-barbed head

of an arrow. He had been shot through and through. Cocked rifles
swept the bush with nervousapprehension. But there was no rustle,

no movement; nothing but the humid oppressive silence.
"Bushmen he no stop," Binu Charley called out, the sound of his

voice startling more than one of them. "Allee same damn funny
business. That fella Koogoo no look 'm eye belong him. He no

savvee little bit."
Koogoo's arms had crumpled under him, and he lay quivering where he

had fallen. Even as Binu Charley came to the front the stricken
black's breath passed from him, and with a final convulsive stir he

lay still.
"Right through the heart," Sheldon said, straightening up from the

stooping examination. "It must have been a trap of some sort."
He noticed Joan's white, tense face, and the wide eyes with which

she stared at the wreck of what had been a man the minute before.
"I recruited that boy myself," she said in a whisper. "He came

down out of the bush at Poonga-Poonga and right on board the Martha
and offered himself. And I was proud. He was my very first

recruit--"
"My word! Look 'm that fella," Binu Charley interrupted, brushing

aside the leafy wall of the run-way and exposing a bow so massive
that no one bushman could have bent it.

The Binu man traced out the mechanics of the trap, and exposed the
hidden fibre in the tangled undergrowth that at contact with

Koogoo's foot had released the taut bow.
They were deep in the primeval forest. A dim twilight prevailed,

for no random shaft of sunlight broke through the thick roof of
leaves and creepers overhead. The Tahitians were plainly awed by

the silence and gloom and mystery of the place and happening, but
they showed themselves doggedly unafraid, and were for pushing on.

The Poonga-Poonga men, on the contrary, were not awed. They were
bushmen themselves, and they were used to this silent warfare,

though the devices were different from those employed by them in
their own bush. Most awed of all were Joan and Sheldon, but, being

whites, they were not supposed to be subject to such commonplace
emotions, and their task was to carry the situation off with

careless bravado as befitted "big fella marsters" of the dominant
breed.

Binu Charley took the lead as they pushed on, and trap after trap
yielded its secret lurking-place to his keen scrutiny. The way was

beset with a thousand annoyances, chiefest among which were thorns,
cunningly concealed, that penetrated the bare feet of the invaders.

Once, during the afternoon, Binu Charley barely missed being
impaled in a staked pit that undermined the trail. There were

times when all stood still and waited for half an hour or more
while Binu Charley prospected suspicious parts of the trail.

Sometimes he was compelled to leave the trail and creep and climb
through the jungle so as to approach the man-traps from behind; and

on one occasion, in spite of his precaution, a spring-bow was
discharged, the flying arrow barely clipping the shoulder of one of

the waiting Poonga-Poonga boys.
Where a slight run-way entered the main one, Sheldon paused and

asked Binu Charley if he knew where it led.
"Plenty bush fella garden he stop along there short way little

bit," was the answer. "All right you like 'm go look 'm along."
"'Walk 'm easy," he cautioned, a few minutes later. "Close up,

that fella garden. S'pose some bush fella he stop, we catch 'm."
Creeping ahead and peering into the clearing for a moment, Binu

Charley beckoned Sheldon to come on cautiously. Joan crouched
beside him, and together they peeped out. The cleared space was

fully half an acre in extent and carefully fenced against the wild
pigs. Paw-paw and banana-trees were just ripening their fruit,

while beneath grew sweet potatoes and yams. On one edge of the
clearing was a small grass house, open-sided, a mere rain-shelter.

In front of it, crouched on his hams before a fire, was a gaunt and
bearded bushman. The fire seemed to smoke excessively, and in the

thick of the smoke a round dark object hung suspended. The bushman
seemed absorbed in contemplation of this object.

Warning them not to shoot unless the man was successfully escaping,
Sheldon beckoned the Poonga-Poonga men forward. Joan smiled

appreciatively to Sheldon. It was head-hunters against head-
hunters. The blacks trod noiselessly to their stations, which were

arranged so that they could spring simultaneously into the open.
Their faces were keen and serious, their eyes eloquent with the

ecstasy of living that was upon them--for this was living, this
game of life and death, and to them it was the only game a man

should play, withal they played it in low and cowardly ways,
killing from behind in the dim forest gloom and rarely coming out

into the open.
Sheldon whispered the word, and the ten runners leaped forward--for

Binu Charley ran with them. The bushman's keen ears warned him,
and he sprang to his feet, bow and arrow in hand, the arrow fixed

in the notch and the bow bending as he sprang. The man he let
drive at dodged the arrow, and before he could shoot another his

enemies were upon him. He was rolled over and over and dragged to
his feet, disarmed and helpless.

"Why, he's an ancient Babylonian!" Joan cried, regarding him.
"He's an Assyrian, a Phoenician! Look at that straight nose, that

narrow face, those high cheek-bones--and that slanting, oval
forehead, and the beard, and the eyes, too."

"And the snaky locks," Sheldon laughed.
The bushman was in mortal fear, led by all his training to expect

nothing less than death; yet he did not cower away from them.
Instead, he returned their looks with lean self-sufficiency, and

finally centred his gaze upon Joan, the first white woman he had
ever seen.

"My word, bush fella kai-kai along that fella boy," Binu Charley
remarked.

So stolid was his manner of utterance that Joan turned carelessly
to see what had attracted his attention, and found herself face to

face with Gogoomy. At least, it was the head of Gogoomy--the dark
object they had seen hanging in the smoke. It was fresh--the

smoke-curing had just begun--and, save for the closed eyes, all the
sullen handsomeness and animal virility of the boy, as Joan had

known it, was still to be seen in the monstrous thing that twisted
and dangled in the eddying smoke.

Nor was Joan's horror lessened by the conduct of the Poonga-Poonga
boys. On the instant they recognized the head, and on the instant

rose their wild heartylaughter as they explained to one another in
shrill falsetto voices. Gogoomy's end was a joke. He had been

foiled in his attempt to escape. He had played the game and lost.
And what greater joke could there be than that the bushmen should

have eaten him? It was the funniest incident that had come under
their notice in many a day. And to them there was certainly