Virginia slept in a chamber with three Dyak women.It was to this apartment that the chief finally consentedto dispatch two of his warriors. The men crept noiselesslywithin the pitch unlit interior until they came to the sleepingform of one of the Dyak women. Cautiously they awoke her.

"Where is the black girl?" asked one of the men in alow whisper. "Muda Saffir has sent us for her.Tell her that her portlyher is somewhat sick and wants her,but do not mention Muda Saffir's name lest shemight not come."

The whispering awakened Virginia and she lay wonderingwhat the cause of the midnight conference might be,for she recognized that one of the speakers was a man,and there had been no man in the apartment when she hadgone to sleep earlier in the night.

Presently she heard some one approach her, and a momentlater a woman's voice addressed her; but she could notunderstand enough of the native tongue to make outprecisely the message the speaker wished to convey.The words "father," "sick," and "come," however shefinally understood after several repetitions, for shehad picked up a smattering of the Dyak language duringher enforced association with the natives.

The moment that the possibilities suggested by thesefew words dawned upon her, she sprang to her feet andfollowed the woman toward the entrance of the apartment.Immediately without the two warriors stood upon theverandah awaiting their victim, and as Virginia passedthrough the entranceway she was seized roughly from eitherside, a weighty hand was clapped over her mouth,and before she could make even an effort to rebelshe had been dragged to the end of the verandah,down the notched log to the ground and a moment laterfound herself in a war prahu which was immediatelypushed into the stream.

Since Virginia had come to the long-house after herrescue from the ourang outangs, supposedly by von Horn,Rajah Muda Saffir had kept somewhat much out of sight,for he knew that should the girl see him she wouldrecognize him as the man who had stolen her fromthe Ithaca. So it came as a mighty shock to the girlwhen she heard the hated tones of the man whom shehad knocked overboard from the prahu two nights before,and realized that the bestial Malay sat close beside her,and that she was again inside his power. She looked nowfor no mercy, nor could she hope to again escape him soeasily as she had before, and so she sat with bowed headin the bottom of the swiftly moving craft, buried inanguished thoughts, hopeless and miserable.