With this state of exaltation in which he saw himself in some incomprehensible way always victorious, whatever might befall, there was mingled a tenacity of purpose.  He could not sacrifice his intention, the intention of years, the intention of his life; he could no more part with it and exist than he could cut out his heart and live.  The adventurer held fast to his adventure which made him in his own sight exactly what he was.

He considered the problem with cool audacity, backed by a belief in his own power.  It was not these two men he had to save; he had to save himself!  And looked upon in this way the situation appeared familiar.

Hassim had told him the two white men had been taken by their captors to Daman’s camp.  The young Rajah, leaving his sister in the canoe, had landed on the sand and had crept to the very edge of light thrown by the fires by which the Illanuns were cooking.  Daman was sitting apart by a larger blaze.  Two praus rode in shallow water near the sandbank; on the ridge, a sentry walked watching the lights of the brig; the camp was full of quiet whispers.  Hassim returned to his canoe, then he and his sister, paddling cautiously round the anchored praus, in which women’s voices could be heard, approached the other end of the camp.  The light of the big blaze there fell on the water and the canoe skirted it without a splash, keeping in the night.  Hassim, landing for the second time, crept again close to the fires.  Each prau had, according to the customs of the Illanun rovers when on a raiding expedition, a smaller war-boat and these being light and manageable were hauled up on the sand not far from the big blaze; they sat high on the shelving shore throwing heavy shadows.  Hassim crept up toward the largest of them and then standing on tiptoe could look at the camp across the gunwales.  The confused talking of the men was like the buzz of insects in a forest.  A child wailed on board one of the praus and a woman hailed the shore shrilly.  Hassim unsheathed his kris and held it in his hand.

Very soon—­he said—­he saw the two white men walking amongst the fires.  They waved their arms and talked together, stopping from time to time; they approached Daman; and the short man with the hair on his face addressed him earnestly and at great length.  Daman sat cross-legged upon a little carpet with an open Koran on his knees and chanted the versets swaying to and fro with his eyes shut.

The Illanun chiefs reclining wrapped in cloaks on the ground raised themselves on their elbows to look at the whites.  When the short white man finished speaking he gazed down at them for a while, then stamped his foot.  He looked angry because no one understood him.  Then suddenly he looked very sad; he covered his face with his hands; the tall man put his hand on the short man’s shoulder and whispered into his ear.  The dry wood of the fires crackled, the Illanuns slept, cooked, talked, but with their weapons at hand.  An armed man or two came up to stare at the prisoners and then returned to their fire.  The two whites sank down in the sand in front of Daman.  Their clothes were soiled, there was sand in their hair.  The tall man had lost his hat; the glass in the eye of the short man glittered very much; his back was muddy and one sleeve of his coat torn up to the elbow.