"I suppose so, madam," said Chumbley; "but let me tell you that England will not let us stay here your prisoners; sooner than let you triumph she would send an army to search for and take us back." "And I tell you," cried the Princess, fiercely, "that I have thought well over all this, and have made such plans, that even if your people did not think you dead, they would not find you. I am queen with my people, and I will not be beaten when I undertake a task. If they should learn that you were here, and come to shoot and burn, we would flee into the jungle." "Where they would hunt you out, Princess, cost what it might," said Chumbley. "Let them," said the Inche Maida, with her eyes flashing, and looking very queenly as she spoke. "They are big and strong, and they have many men. They would surround us then, and think to take us and drag you away; but they do not know our people yet--they do not know what a Malay Princess would do. Mr Chumbley," she said, speaking to him, but gazing at Hilton as she spoke, "we Malays are gentle and calm, but we have angry passions. If you rouse the hot blood within us, it becomes fierce and hotter still. Don't think that I shall not have my way; for I tell you that at the last, sooner than be conquered by those your people sent, I would kill you both, and then--then," she cried excitedly, "I should kill myself!" VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER TWENTY THREE. WHY CHUMBLEY WAS BROUGHT. As the Inche Maida uttered her angry threat she swept out of the room, leaving the two young officers staring at the heavy curtain that closed the door. "The fury!--the tigress!" exclaimed Hilton. "Well, I don't know!" drawled Chumbley. "She seems to me very much like what woman is all the world round." "Why, she is a blood-thirsty savage!" cried Hilton. "No: only a woman who has lived all her life where every man carries a sharp-pointed weapon. Englishwomen are much the same at heart." "Why, you blasphemer against the honour of our fair English maids and dames!" cried Hilton, laughing. "Not I!" said Chumbley. "They don't live amongst people who carry daggers and spears. We go unarmed--I mean Europeans--and pay soldiers to do our fighting for us; but you baffle a woman of spirit--you cross her and behave badly to her, and you see if she wouldn't fight." "Fight, man?" "Yea, but not with a dagger; she would fight with her tongue--perhaps with her pen--and sting and wound, and perhaps pretty well slay her foe." "But this woman is outrageous!" cried Hilton. "Our English ladies are all that is soft and gentle." "Sometimes," said Chumbley; "some of us get an ugly stab or two now and then." "Out upon you, slanderer!" cried Hilton, laughingly, as he paced up and down once more. "If you don't stop that irritating, wild beast's cage-walk," said Chumbley, "I'll petition the Inche Maida to have you chained to a bamboo." "Pish!" cried Hilton, imitating his friend, and throwing himself down upon one of the divans.