That their words were interpreted in a friendly spirit by the shadowy natives on the anchored boat seemed to Grenville entirely obvious. There was something akin to cheer in the voices that replied across the water. Every man was seen to halt at his work and come to the shoreward side of the craft, to peer through the darkness towards the beach. Three of the fiends with whom he had waged unequal battle now appeared on the sand strip a rod from where Sidney was standing. Their backs were presented as they called and gestured to the men beyond, and Grenville identified the chief once more by the fellow's unusual height. Apparently an argument ensued, conducted, as to the shoreward end, by the tall and dominant leader. He waved quick, eloquent gestures, frequently towards the headland whence Grenville had come. That some report of recent proceedings was being thus delivered there could be no reasonable doubt. Expressions of astonishment, satisfaction, and a diabolical glee came back in guttural staccatos from the blood-loving creatures on the vessel. Grenville almost forgot where he was, and why, such indignation burned in his breast as he grasped at the substance of the conference thus held across the tide. Four more head-hunters, come to swell the already heavily outnumbering forces of the island, was too much for Heaven to permit! Against such odds and such diabolism, what possible chance---- He smiled in a grim, sardonic manner at the thought that a fight between himself and the now augmented Dyaks would ever again be likely, with this boat anchored here before him, Dyaks camping in the jungle, and no trail left by which he could reach the terrace and Elaine, even could he creep away in the shadows and silence of the thicket. It appeared to him now that the chief on shore was becoming impatient, or angry. He shouted orders and waved his hand down the length of the island in a style growing rapidly more and more imperative, while the new arrivals answered back in a stubborn and sullen dissatisfaction that Sidney began to hope might lead to open rupture. Should one of the factions war against the other, he would think these four boatmen a Godsend. Even then, he reflected, the situation, as bearing on himself, might present no altered aspect till all was decidedly too late. Should he fail to return to Elaine with water to-night--she would doubtless never see his face again. Should morning still find him hiding here--their fates would have a sudden termination. And now, with this craft at anchor in the current, so close inshore, there could be no chance to escape around it unobserved, what possible alternative was offered but to stand here, nearly to his waist in the water, aware that the deadliest sort of snakes might be coiled within a foot of his hand?