He was suddenly alive to a sense of imminent danger lurking fearfully close at hand. None too soon and none too silently he rose to his feet, for there at the ledge the catamaran was halted and, even as the two impatient Dyaks landed, their companions came worming up the shelf. A moment more and all must have been too late, as Grenville clearly realized. Indeed, with the utmost caution only could retreat to his gallery be effected without a betrayal of his presence. He dared not move swiftly from his post--and yet he must be quick! Slowly and noiselessly withdrawing from his place beside the wall, he took one long step inwards, towards the door he must place against the open gallery entrance. The dawn-light, redder and more intense, now cast an intangible shadow in the chamber as a Dyak's head appeared above the ledge. The fiends were all but on his heels! He slipped within the passage, without creating the slightest sound, save the loud, tumultuous pounding of his heart. Lifting the door no less cautiously into its proper position, he left a crack, that was barely a half-inch wide, through which to watch his visitors, writhing like so many pythons over the shelf and into the ebon well of gloom. Their plan was to crawl to the confines of the cave--unless they should creep by chance upon their sleeping victims sooner, leaving a couple crouched outside to prevent the quarry's escape. Torches were not to be lighted until every man was posted, and then would be thrown to the center of the cavern where their light would reveal the chamber's occupants, while the outer rim of darkness still concealed the gleaming knives. A counter attack would be rendered out of the question. The cordon would be complete. Three of those strangely-moving shadows Grenville plainly discerned. There was nothing more to be seen--and nothing to be heard. That several Dyaks were almost at his feet he felt, but could not have proved. He had hoped for half a dozen at the least. He hoped for them still, and deliberately waited, trusting they might arrive. It seemed such a pity to waste his mines and not obliterate the lot! He wondered if more of them might not come--then how he should know, if they did. Meanwhile, the three not included here in the cave-attacking party were equally active above. The red of the dawn had seen them advancing through the jungle where they meant to take the hill and block the retreat of the victims to that eminence by any chance of extra ladders or white man's baffling magic. Elaine beheld them, through the strengthening light, so soon as they crossed the clearing. They paused there as if for a signal, which they may or may not have received. It gave the girl, who had watched with an ever-increasing fever through the night and that blood-red dawn, a long wild moment in which to imagine fates untold that must have overtaken Sidney.