would make but the shortest possible work of you if they had got
you in their power."

"Yes, Dick. Look at that canoe coming up stream; what a good looking
chap that is in the stern, though by the way he scowls at us I can
quite believe he would, as you say, cut our throats if he had the
chance. That is a pretty little child sitting by him, and what a
gorgeous dress she has! There, you see, he can look pleasant enough
when he speaks to her. I fancy they must have come from a long way
up the river, for they look wilder than most of the fellows who
pass us. If that fool who is steering her does not mind what he
is about, Dick, he will either run into that canoe coming down or
else get across our chain. There, I told you so."

The man at the tiller was in fact, looking, with mingled curiosity
and hostility, at the gunboat that he was passing but a few yards
away, and did not notice a canoe, manned by six rowers, that was
coming down with the stream, taking an oblique course across the
bows of the Serpent, and was indeed hidden from his view by the
hull of the vessel, until he had passed beyond her. Then there was
a sudden shout and a yell from a dozen throats, as the two canoes
came into collision, the one proceeding up the river being struck
on the quarter with a force that almost cut her in two, and in an
instant her occupants were in the water. As the Malays were to a
man almost as much at home in the water as on land, the accident
would have had little effect beyond the loss of the boat and its
contents, had it not been that the stern of the other craft struck
the Malay chief with such force as to completely disable him, and
he would have sunk at once had not two of the boatmen grasped him
and kept his head above water.