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At Posso, the next port on Celebes, we land a Dutch officer, bound for the important barracks on a hill above the straggling campong, after a successful expedition against the tree-dwellers, cannibals, and slave-traders of the interior, still sunk in barbarism.

All about him lay the eleven terrible men whom he had driven from the bungalow the previous night. The sight of them brought a realization of new responsibilities. To leave them here in the campong would mean the immediate death of Professor Maxon and the Chinaman.

Hideous gods in glittering robes, and appalling demons painted in black and scarlet, bring up the rear of the long procession, which traverses every street and lane of the Chinese campong, the open houses displaying the lighted altars and tutelary gods of Buddhist and Taoist creed, for the mystic philosophy of the Eastern sages materialises into grossest realism by passing through the crucible of Chinese thought.

In Nov. 1827, a principal chief of pirates, named Sindana, made a descent upon Mamoodgoo with forty-five proas, burnt three-fourths of the campong, driving the rajah with his family among the mountains. Some scores of men were killed, and 300 made prisoners, besides women and children to half that amount.

This was soon after followed by the heavy roar of a larger gun on board one of the prahus, to which the occupants of the little fort could not reply, on account of the darkness, and the fact that one of the attacking prahus was between them and the campong, while the other was so sheltered by trees that it would have been folly to have fired.

At the same moment von Horn was leading Virginia Maxon farther and farther from the north campong where resistance, if there was to be any, would be most likely to occur. At his superior's cough Bududreen had signalled silently to the men within the enclosure, and a moment later six savage lascars crept stealthily to his side.

Then Mahmat says that when Joanna struck her and ran off, the other two seemed to become suddenly mad together. They rushed here and there. Mahmat says those were his very words: 'I saw her standing holding the pistol that fires many times and pointing it all over the campong. I was afraid lest she might shoot me, and jumped on one side. Then I saw the white man coming at her swiftly.

Anywhere within a mile or two of the sultan's campong the people were ready enough to give information to the English, when a boat was sent to cruise about and endeavour to find where the rajah had hidden; but beyond that distance they were met with stern looks of distrust, and it was evident to the officers in charge that the rajah was perfectly safe, his influence being too great amongst the people for any one to act as informer.

Gay passers, a busy campong Tchina, a very hive of Celestial industry, and innumerable drives beneath over-arching trees, with distant views of purple peaks, comprise the interests of old-world Djokja, with the one exception of the famous Taman Sarie, or Water Castle, ruined by earthquake, but remaining as a pathetic memorial of bygone power and pride.

There was no single one who would not betray his best friend for a handful of silver, nor any but was inwardly hoping and scheming to the end that he might alone possess both the chest and the girl. It was such a pack of scoundrels that Bududreen led toward the north campong to bear away the treasure.