shore and was swinging up stream under the vigorous
strokes of its fifty oarsmen. For an instant he stood
poised upon the bank as though to spring after the
retreating prahu, but the knowledge that he could not
swim held him back--it was useless to throw away his
life when the need of it was so great if Virginia Maxon
was to be saved.

Turning to the other prahus he saw that one was already
launched, but that the crew of the other was engaged in
a desperate battle with the seven remaining members of
his crew for possession of the boat. Leaping among the
combatants he urged his fellows aboard the prahu which
was already half filled with Dyaks. Then he shoved the
boat out into the river, jumping aboard himself as its
prow cleared the gravelly beach.

For several minutes that long, hollowed log was a
veritable floating hell of savage, screaming men locked
in deadly battle. The sharp parangs of the head
hunters were no match for the superhuman muscles of the
creatures that battered them about; now lifting one
high above his fellows and using the body as a club to
beat down those nearby; again snapping an arm or leg as
one might break a pipe stem; or hurling a living
antagonist headlong above the heads of his fellows to
the dark waters of the river. And above them all in
the thickest of the fight, towering even above his own
giants, rose the mighty figure of the terrible white
man, whose very presence wrought havoc with the valor