Another minute and he drew near, brandishing a kriss that dripped with the gore of those whom he had already stabbed.  Catching sight of the white men he made straight for them.  He was possessed of only one eye, but that one seemed to concentrate and flash forth the fire of a dozen eyes, while his dishevelled hair and blood-stained face and person gave him an appalling aspect.

“It is Baderoon!” said Van der Kemp in a subdued but stern tone.

Nigel, who stood next to him, glanced at the hermit.  His face was deadly pale; his eyes gleamed with a strange, almost unearthly light, and his lips were firmly compressed.  With a sudden nervous motion, unlike his usually calm demeanour, he drew his long knife, and to Nigel’s surprise cast it away from him.  At that moment a woman who came in the madman’s way was stabbed by him to the heart and rent the air with her dying shriek as she fell.  No one could have saved her, the act was so quickly done.  Van der Kemp would have leaped to her rescue, but it was too late; besides, there was no need to do so now, for the maniac, recognising his enemy, rushed at him with a shout that sounded like a triumphant yell.  Seeing this, and that his friend stood unarmed, as well as unmoved, regarding Baderoon with a fixed gaze, Nigel stepped a pace in advance to protect him, but Van der Kemp seized his arm and thrust him violently aside.  Next moment the pirate was upon him with uplifted knife, but the hermit caught his wrist, and with a heave worthy of Samson hurled him to the ground, where he lay for a moment quite stunned.

Before he could recover, the natives, who had up to this moment held back, sprang upon the fallen man with revengeful yells, and a dozen knives were about to be buried in his breast when the hermit sprang forward to protect his enemy from their fury.  But the man whose wife had been the last victim came up at the moment, and led an irresistible rush which bore back the hermit as well as his comrades, who had crowded round him, and in another minute the maniac was almost hacked to pieces.

“I did not kill him—­thank God!” muttered Van der Kemp as he left the market-place, where the relatives of those who had been murdered were wailing over their dead.

After this event even the professor was anxious to leave the place, so that early next morning the party resumed their journey, intending to make a short stay at the next village.  Failing to reach it that night, however, they were compelled to encamp in the woods.  Fortunately they came upon a hill which, although not very high, was sufficiently so, with the aid of watch-fires, to protect them from tigers.  From the summit, which rose just above the tree-tops, they had a magnificent view of the forest.  Many of the trees were crowned with flowers among which the setting sun shone for a brief space with glorious effulgence.

Van der Kemp and Nigel stood together apart from the others, contemplating the wonderful scene.