“Yes, if you come unarmed.”

“And the chief, too, sahib?”

“Yes, but listen!  On the first sign of treachery I shoot both of you!”

“We will keep faith, sahib.  May kites pick our bones if we fail!”

Then there stepped into full view the renegade Mussulman and his leader.  They carried no guns; the chief wore his kriss.

[Illustration:  THE TWO HALTED SOME TEN PACES IN FRONT OF THE CAVERN.  AND THE BELLIGERENTS SURVEYED EACH OTHER.]

“Tell him to leave that dagger behind!” cried the sailor imperiously.  As the enemy demanded a parley he resolved to adopt the conqueror’s tone from the outset.  The chief obeyed with a scowl, and the two advanced to the foot of the rock.

“Stand close to me,” said Jenks to Iris.  “Let them see you plainly, but pull your hat well down over your eyes.”

She silently followed his instructions.  Now that the very crisis of their fate had arrived she was nervous, shaken, conscious only of a desire to sink on her knees, and pray.

One or two curious heads were craned round the corner of the rock.

“Stop!” cried Jenks.  “If those men do not instantly go away I will fire at them.”

The Indian translated this order and the chief vociferated some clanging syllables which had the desired effect.  The two halted some ten paces in front of the cavern, and the belligerents surveyed each other.  It was a fascinating spectacle, this drama in real life.  The yellow-faced Dyak, gaudily attired in a crimson jacket and sky-blue pantaloons of Chinese silk—­a man with the beaute du diable, young, and powerfully built—­and the brown-skinned white-clothed Mahommedan, bony, tall, and grey with hardship, looked up at the occupants of the ledge.  Iris, slim and boyish in her male garments, was dwarfed by the six-foot sailor, but her face was blood-stained, and Jenks wore a six weeks’ stubble of beard.  Holding their Lee-Metfords with alert ease, with revolvers strapped to their sides, they presented a warlike and imposing tableau in their inaccessible perch.  In the path of the emissaries lay the bodies of the slain.  The Dyak leader scowled again as he passed them.

“Sahib,” began the Indian, “my chief, Taung S’Ali, does not wish to have any more of his men killed in a foolish quarrel about a woman.  Give her up, he says, and he will either leave you here in peace, or carry you safely to some place where you can find a ship manned by white men.”

“A woman!” said Jenks, scornfully.  “That is idle talk!  What woman is here?”

This question nonplussed the native.

“The woman whom the chief saw half a month back, sahib.”

“Taung S’Ali was bewitched.  I slew his men so quickly that he saw spirits.”

The chief caught his name and broke in with a question.  A volley of talk between the two was enlivened with expressive gestures by Taung S’Ali, who several times pointed to Iris, and Jenks now anathematized his thoughtless folly in permitting the Dyak to approach so near.  The Mahommedan, of course, had never seen her, and might have persuaded the other that in truth there were two men only on the rock.