For a second or more Jaffir did not stir, then with a sudden leap from his squatting posture he flew through the air and struck the jungle in a great commotion of leaves, vanishing instantly like a swimmer diving from on high.  A deep murmur of surprise arose in the armed party, a spear was thrown, a shot was fired, three or four men dashed into the forest, but they soon returned crestfallen with apologetic smiles; while Jaffir, striking an old path that seemed to lead in the right direction, ran on in solitude, raising a rustle of leaves, with a naked parang in his hand and a cloud of flies about his head.  The sun declining to the westward threw shafts of light across his dark path.  He ran at a springy half-trot, his eyes watchful, his broad chest heaving, and carrying the emerald ring on the forefinger of a clenched hand as though he were afraid it should slip off, fly off, be torn from him by an invisible force, or spirited away by some enchantment.  Who could tell what might happen?  There were evil forces at work in the world, powerful incantations, horrible apparitions.  The messenger of princes and of great men, charged with the supreme appeal of his master, was afraid in the deepening shade of the forest.  Evil presences might have been lurking in that gloom.  Still the sun had not set yet.  He could see its face through the leaves as he skirted the shore of the lagoon.  But what if Allah’s call should come to him suddenly and he die as he ran!

He drew a long breath on the shore of the lagoon within about a hundred yards from the stranded bows of the Emma.  The tide was out and he walked to the end of a submerged log and sent out a hail for a boat.  Jorgenson’s voice answered.  The sun had sunk behind the forest belt of the coast.  All was still as far as the eye could reach over the black water.  A slight breeze came along it and Jaffir on the brink, waiting for a canoe, shivered a little.

At the same moment Carter, exhausted by thirty hours of uninterrupted toil at the head of whites and Malays in getting the yacht afloat, dropped into Mrs. Travers’ deck chair, on board the Hermit, said to the devoted Wasub:  “Let a good watch be kept to-night, old man,” glanced contentedly at the setting sun and fell asleep.

III

There was in the bows of the Emma an elevated grating over the heel of her bowsprit whence the eye could take in the whole range of her deck and see every movement of her crew.  It was a spot safe from eaves-droppers, though, of course, exposed to view.  The sun had just set on the supreme content of Carter when Jorgenson and Jaffir sat down side by side between the knightheads of the Emma and, public but unapproachable, impressive and secret, began to converse in low tones.

Every Wajo fugitive who manned the hulk felt the approach of a decisive moment.  Their minds were made up and their hearts beat steadily.  They were all desperate men determined to fight and to die and troubling not about the manner of living or dying.  This was not the case with Mrs. Travers who, having shut herself up in the deckhouse, was profoundly troubled about those very things, though she, too, felt desperate enough to welcome almost any solution.