In the darkness of the forest she could not clearly distinguish the forms or features of her abductors, though she reasoned, as was only natural, that Skipper Simms’ party had become aware of the plot against them and had taken this means of thwarting a part of it; but when her captors turned directly into the mazes of the jungle, away from the coast, she began first to wonder and then to doubt, so that presently when a small clearing let the moonlight full upon them she was not surprised to discover that none of the members of the Halfmoon’s company was among her guard.

Barbara Harding had not circled the globe half a dozen times for nothing.  There were few races or nations with whose history, past and present, she was not fairly familiar, and so the sight that greeted her eyes was well suited to fill her with astonishment, for she found herself in the hands of what appeared to be a party of Japanese warriors of the fifteenth or sixteenth century.  She recognized the medieval arms and armor, the ancient helmets, the hairdressing of the two-sworded men of old Japan.  At the belts of two of her captors dangled grisly trophies of the hunt.  In the moonlight she saw that they were the heads of Miller and Swenson.

The girl was horrified.  She had thought her lot before as bad as it could be, but to be in the clutches of these strange, fierce warriors of a long-dead age was unthinkably worse.  That she could ever have wished to be back upon the Halfmoon would have seemed, a few days since, incredible; yet that was precisely what she longed for now.

On through the night marched the little, brown men—­grim and silent—­until at last they came to a small village in a valley away from the coast—­a valley that lay nestled high among lofty mountains.  Here were cavelike dwellings burrowed half under ground, the upper walls and thatched roofs rising scarce four feet above the level.  Granaries on stilts were dotted here and there among the dwellings.

Into one of the filthy dens Barbara Harding was dragged.  She found a single room in which several native and half-caste women were sleeping, about them stretched and curled and perched a motley throng of dirty yellow children, dogs, pigs, and chickens.  It was the palace of Daimio Oda Yorimoto, Lord of Yoka, as his ancestors had christened their new island home.

Once within the warren the two samurai who had guarded Barbara upon the march turned and withdrew—­she was alone with Oda Yorimoto and his family.  From the center of the room depended a swinging shelf upon which a great pile of grinning skulls rested.  At the back of the room was a door which Barbara had not at first noticed—­evidently there was another apartment to the dwelling.

The girl was given little opportunity to examine her new prison, for scarce had the guards withdrawn than Oda Yorimoto approached and grasped her by the arm.

“Come!” he said, in Japanese that was sufficiently similar to modern Nippon to be easily understood by Barbara Harding.  With the word he drew her toward a sleeping mat on a raised platform at one side of the room.