"Aho!" grunted the bearded Sikhs, and the boat fairly hissed along the water. It was a long row and a stiff row against the main stream, but presently they entered the backwater, and the boat slid like a huge saurian on the ooze. They passed deeper and deeper into the jungle, which hung so thickly about the creek that the men had to stoop below the gunwale to prevent the branches from stopping their progress and the terrible thorns from doing them injury. Finally they could proceed no farther; so tangled was the maze of forest, so thickly did it overhang the water, that it seemed as if the creek ran into the bowels of the earth with a sudden abruptness. Very softly did Serferez ground the boat, and one by one they all stepped out. "Stay you here and look after the boat," whispered Serferez to the youngest of the men. "And, fool! don't sit in the boat, but hide _here_--_here_ in the bushes, and keep your eyes and ears open. Shoot the first Burman who comes near it dead. Don't waste time in asking questions. Remember this, or you will never see the white hills again, I swear by the Prophet's head!" and he tapped his sword hilt significantly. After this no word was spoken, but the five men with Serferez at their head made their way in Indian file through the forest. Sometimes they were able to walk, but most frequently they had to resort to the tedious process of crawling through the jungle on all fours. They dared not use their _dahs_ to cut the underwood, for the slightest sound might alarm their quarry, and many a detour had to be made to find a passage. Serferez himself acted as guide, and he made no mistakes. Finally they came to the little clearing, and halted on its borders. A little to the left the huge silk-cotton tree reared its white trunk and spread out its huge ghostly arms like a forest giant struck with white leprosy. It was in full bloom, and the magnificent scarlet and orange of the bombax flowers starred its foliage, and ever and anon dropped with soft heaviness on the turf below. But it was not this, nor the hummingbirds that dipped their long beaks into the red cups of the flowers, that made the eyes of the men watching from the jungle lighten and Serferez's lips to draw back with a tigerish snarl. There, under the tree, not forty yards away, seated, smoking comfortably, were the two men whom they had sought for so long. Two of the police put up their rifles, but at a glance from their chief put them down again. "Alive," he whispered; "you two go round and then rush them; they will come straight at us, and then----" The two men sidled off like snakes noiselessly through the damp undergrowth. Moung Sen now began to sing in a droning voice: "Mah Se hath a dower of roses, Mah Kit hath a dower of pelf; And I sigh for the scent of the roses, But die for the gleam of the pelf."