When you come to think of it, there was something bordering upon the heroic in the action of this unscrupulous man with the marred face, who glided gently down the river on this wild, lone-hand raid. Even the local geography was unknown to him. For aught he knew, the stream might be beset by impassable rapids and by dangers that would task his skill and courage to the utmost; and even if he triumphed over natural obstacles, the enmity which his actions would arouse would breed up foemen for him wherever he went. He was going forth deliberately to war against heavy odds, yet he poled his raft down the river with deft punts, and gazed calmly ahead of him with a complete absence of fear.
It was noon upon the second day of his lonely journey down the Bětok that Kûlop sighted a large Sâkai camp, evidently the property of semi-tame tribesfolk, set in a clearing on the right bank of the river. The sight of a Malay coming from such an unusual quarter filled the jungle-people with superstitious fear, and in a few minutes every man, woman, and child had fled into the forest.
Kûlop went through the ten or fifteen squalid huts which stood in the clearing, and an occasional grunt of satisfaction signified that he approved of the stores of valuable gum lying stowed away in the sheds. He calculated that there could not be less than seven pîkul, a quantity that would fetch a good six hundred Mexican dollars, even when the poor price ruling in the most distant Malayan villages of the interior was taken into consideration. This, of
