Jack was led down the descent and brought face to face with the native. The English lad saw at once that the man bound to the cross was stupefied with an extremity of terror. His brown skin was a frightful ashen shade, his eyes were wide, distended with horror, and fixed on the swamp, his mouth open, his jaw hanging limp. "You will see him again in the morning," repeated the half-caste; "and you will see, I assure you, another kind of man." "Yes," said Jack, "after you have practised your brutal devilries on him." "No, no, oh no," laughed Saya Chone in his soft, cunning tones. "We shall do no more to him. His whole punishment consists in remaining here in bonds from sunset to sunrise. Then we shall loose the ropes, and he will be free." "Yes," said Jack, who thought now that he saw daylight, "with every vein full of the fever and malaria that haunt this swamp." "Fever," laughed Saya Chone, "this fellow is absolutely safe against fever. You could no more give him jungle fever than you could make him ten feet high. A night here would give you a fever that would kill you in ten days, never him." Jack was puzzled once more, and said nothing. He resolved to ask his father what it all meant. But he soon found that this chance was not to be afforded him. He was led back up the rise, and placed at some distance from the spot where his father stood. He saw his father taken down the slope and confronted with the condemned native, then brought back. At once the procession was reformed. Jack was placed at the head, his father at the rear, and they were not allowed to exchange a word. Jack's heart sank a little. Did this mean that they were to be separated? It did. When the great house was once more gained, Jack was shut up by himself in a room which he had not seen before, and there he spent the night. The sun had been up a couple of hours next morning before Jack heard the sound of any movement outside his cell. Then there was a rattle of creaking bolts and the door was flung open. Saya Chone stood in the doorway with the usual band of blue-kilted and well-armed Kachins. He did not speak, only beckoned with his hand, his malicious eyes lit up with their usual evil grin. Nor did he speak throughout the subsequent journey when Jack was led over the track he had followed the night before. Jack looked round for his father, but no sign of Mr. Haydon was to be seen. The half-caste ambled ahead on a pony, Jack and four of U Saw's retainers followed behind, and that was the whole of the party. As they approached the edge of the declivity which ran down towards the swamp, the sound of a loud, measured voice came through the air.