A few sticks had already been pulled up at the point of the hedge through which Will intended to make a sally, and the band now passed noiselessly out. The chief himself led the way, the white boys following behind him. Lying upon their stomachs, they crawled noiselessly along down the little depression and, in ten minutes, were well in the wood; without having met with an enemy, although they had several times heard voices among the trees, near them. They now rose to their feet and, making a wide detour, came down, after a quarter of an hour's walk, upon the stream. Here the gourds and baskets were filled; and then, keeping along by the waterside, they continued their march. Presently they saw a number of fires, round which many Malays were sitting. They crept noiselessly up until within a few yards and then, with a yell, burst upon the enemy. Numbers were cut down at once; and the rest, appalled by this attack on their rear, and supposing that the inhabitants of some other village must have arrived to the assistance of those they were besieging, at once fled in all directions. Those remaining in the village had seconded the attack by wild shouts, so loud and continuous that their besiegers had no reason to suppose that their number had been weakened. For a few minutes the pursuit was kept up; then the chief recalled his followers, with a shout. The water baskets--many of which had been thrown down in the attack--were refilled, and the party made their way up to the village, where they were received with shouts of triumph. The panic of the Malays had been, in no slight degree, caused by the appearance of the two boys; who had purposely stripped to the waist, and had shouted at the top of their voices as, waving the krisses which they had borrowed, they fell upon the foe. The idea that white devils were leagued with the enemies against them had excited the superstitious fear of the Malays to the utmost; and when, in the morning, scouts again sallied from the village, they found that the enemy had entirely gone--the fact that they had not even returned to carry off the effects which had been abandoned, in the first panic, showing that they had continued their flight, without stopping, to their distant villages. The chief, like an able politician, took advantage of the impression which his white visitors had created and, the same day, sent off messengers to the villages which had combined in the attack against them, saying that the white men--his guests--were very angry; and that, unless peace was made, and a solemn promise given that there should be no renewal of the late attempts, they were going to lay a dreadful spell upon the villages. Women and children would be seized by disease, and the right arms of the warriors wither up.