"Many a Chinaman loses his head hunting that plant," remarked Mr.
Ritchie. "These islanders export a great deal of rattan, and the
head-hunters up there in the mountains watch for the Chinese when
they are working in the forest."

Mackay listened eagerly to his friends' tales of the head-hunting
savages, living in the mountains. They were always on the lookout
for the farmers near their forest lairs. They watched for any
unwary man who went too near the woods, pounced upon him, and
went off in triumph with his head in a bag.

The young traveler's eyes brightened, "I'll visit them some day!"
he cried, looking off toward the mountainside. Mr. Ritchie
glanced quickly at the flashing eyes and the quick, alert figure
of the young man as he strode along, and some hint came to him of
the dauntless young heart which beat beneath that coat of
Canadian gray.

Two days more over hill and dale, through rice and tea and
tobacco-fields, and then, in the middle of a hot afternoon, Mr.
Ritchie began to shiver and shake as though half frozen. Dr.
Dickson understood, and at the next stopping-place he ordered a
sedan-chair and four coolies to carry it. It was the old dreaded
disease that hangs like a black cloud over lovely Formosa, the
malarial fever. Mr. Ritchie had been a missionary only four years
in the island, but already the scourge had come upon him, and his
system was weakened. For, once seized by malaria in Formosa, one
seldom makes his escape. They put the sick man into the chair,
now in a raging fever, and he was carried by the four coolies.