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The little gloomy cabin was going hither and thither in a style which reminded him of the tossings of Gulliver's cage after it had been dropped into the sea by the Brobdingnag eagle. The steward was seizing up mutinous trunks and chairs to the table legs with rope-yarns. The lamp was swinging and the captain's compass see-sawing like monkeys who had gone crazy in bedlams of tree-tops.

Legions of monkeys inhabit the tree-tops, and seem to lead a completely aerial life. It is said that they never come down to earth, but that they cross the forests swinging themselves from tree to tree. The Malays, if they can, build their kampongs near rivers, and during the day we passed several of these. Several had mosques more or less rude.

The female, which, as is usual with birds of prey, was the larger of the pair, once or twice swept within twenty yards of my head, but quickly veered off and resumed her former action of beating back and forth over the tree-tops two hundred yards away. Nests in Holes.

Up these slopes might be seen here and there, gleaming between the tree-tops, a pathway leading to a little irregular mass of building that seemed to have clambered in a hasty way up the mountain-side, and taken a difficult stand there for the sake of showing the tall belfry as a sight of beauty to the scattered and clustered houses of the village below.

For at that moment we heard the long sweep of the oars in the water, and out from the mouth of the creek came the boat, the brawny negroes bending to their task. The commanding figure of the old Tory stood in the stern, looking back up the creek whence they came. Unconsciously my glance followed his, and I saw that the sky was crimson, and high above the tree-tops the flames licked the skies.

The banks of the stream were almost lost; hundreds of square miles of forest-clad plain were under water, the tree-tops alone showing the navigators the true course of the river. The flood flowing sea-wards became thicker, deeper, and mightier than ever. The humid heat of the stormy summer became well-nigh unbearable. Men sickened, and in a few cases died.

We raced off toward Squaw Creek and did not stop until the ground itself stopped fell away before us so abruptly that the next step would have been out into the tree-tops. We stood panting on the edge of the ravine, looking down at the trees and bushes that grew below us. The wind was so strong that I had to hold my hat on, and the girls' skirts were blown out before them.

What poly-tinted fancies underfoot in the moss! Strange visitants came from the north. Flocks of birds, southward bound, skimmed these alien skies. Sometimes they alighted on the tree-tops or along the banks of the torrent, chattering in great excitement, commenting mightily on the country. Birt had never been so light-hearted as during these days.

The sun was just rising as he gained the summit of the flat mountain at the valley's western boundary. Far beneath him he saw smoke arising above the tree-tops of the forest at the base of the foothills. "Man," he murmured. "And there were fifty who went forth to track me down. Can it be they?"

He did not know of the soft-footed, night-eyed creatures of prey the fox, the lynx, the fisher-cat, the mink and the ermine, nor of the round-eyed, feathered murderers in the tree-tops yet that same something told him they were out there among the shadows, under the luring glow of the moon. And a thing happened, all at once, to stab the truth home to him.