"He wishes to take me back to my father, that is all.
If you will return me to him you may keep the chest,
if that is what you wish."

Ninaka looked at her quizzically for a moment.
Evidently then she was of some value. Possibly should
he retain her he could wring a handsome ransom from the
white man. He would wait and see, it were always an
easy matter to rid himself of her should circumstances
require. The river was there, deep, dark and silent,
and he could place the responsibility for her loss
upon Muda Saffir.

Shortly after day break Ninaka beached his prahu before
the long-house of a peaceful river tribe. The chest
he hid in the underbrush close by his boat, and with
the girl ascended the notched log that led to the verandah
of the structure, which, stretching away for three hundred
yards upon its tall piles, resembled a huge centipede.

The dwellers in the long-house extended every courtesy
to Ninaka and his crew. At the former's request
Virginia was hidden away in a dark sleeping closet
in one of the windowless living rooms which opened
along the verandah for the full length of the house.
Here a native girl brought her food and water, sitting,
while she ate, in rapt contemplation of the white skin
and golden hair of the strange female.

At about the time that Ninaka pulled his prahu upon