These pests hung on every leaf and blade of grass and, with outstretched head, waited the passer-by on whom they instantly fixed, to worm through puttie or breeches, through coat and shirt, until the flesh was reached and the blood-sucking head inserted beneath. For nearly nine months now Patterson and Rupert had been travelling—prospecting and working—in this wild and dangerous region. For Rupert, nine months of keen excitement, which had almost wiped out the dreadful past. But, deep in his heart, was embedded the memory of the woman he still loved; and the memory of his father and the little homestead among the Devonshire moorlands. The one thing he could never forget was that he would, perhaps for ever, remain an exile. Yet he dreamed of returning home one day, of seeing his loved ones again—if only for a few brief hours. The sun was below the mountain tops, and it was almost time to think of selecting a camping-place for the night. Patterson stretched himself and sat up. "Where shall we land?" he asked in Malay. "I don’t know—wherever your honour wishes," the helmsman replied. "Your honour knows best." Before Patterson could reply a huge tree on the right bank, not twenty yards ahead, crashed down right across the stream, its great branches throwing up a column of water, while its dense top was locked in the foliage of the other bank. "Murut! Murut!" shouted the Malays. "Turn quick! Quick!" The water swirled beneath the swift strokes of the paddles as they turned the canoe in its own length. A sudden crack with the rending sound of a falling tree caused them to pause with paddles in the air, as another giant of the forest crashed down the stream below them. Instantly a shot rang out from the jungle and the air was filled with yells of "Hoot-ka-Poot," the dread war-cry of the Head-hunting Muruts. Naked figures climbed over the fallen trees that hemmed them in, and musket shots from both banks added to the din, though the bullets whizzed high overhead or harmlessly struck the water. At the first alarm Rupert and Patterson had seized their rifles and opened fire, Patterson shouting orders to keep the canoe in mid-stream. "Fire at the men on the tree ahead, Cotton," he said. "We must force a passage up stream.... Good shot!" as a Murut who had reached the middle of the tree threw up his arms and toppled face down into the stream. Two more were lying limp in the tangle of branches and another went splashing and spluttering past the canoe, the swift running current red with his blood. Suddenly the man in the bows leaped up with a shriek that ran high above the noise of the fight, his eyes starting from his head with horror, as he stared at a tiny bamboo shaft that he held in his left hand, while his right plucked convulsively at his side, from which a few drops of blood were oozing. Slowly he sank to his knees, while his fellow paddlemen huddled away from him, muttering the dread words, "Upas, Upas poison! He’s hit!"