The two guards leaped to their feet, feeling for their pistols; but when they saw who had surprised them they grinned broadly and jabbered volubly. They addressed all their remarks to a huge and villainous fellow whom they called chief. He it was whom the pirates had awaited, and whose prolonged absence had resulted in the determination to execute the prisoners of the _Priscilla_. When the chief learned of what was going on in the jungle he cursed and bellowed in rage. He saw many thousand liangs of sycee evaporating before his eyes. Shouting orders to his fellows to follow him he leaped into the craft that had brought them to the _Priscilla_, and a moment later was pushing rapidly toward the shore. Without waiting to draw the boat upon the beach the chief plunged into the jungle, his men at his heels. Far ahead of him trudged the weary and fear-sickened prisoners, lashed onward with sticks and the flats of murderous parangs. At last the pirates halted in a tangled mass of vegetation. "Here," said one; but another thought they should proceed a little further. For a few minutes the two men argued, then the first drew his parang and advanced upon Thandar. "Here!" he insisted and swung the blade about his head. A sudden crashing of the underbrush and loud and angry shouts caused him to turn his eyes in the direction of the interruption. The prisoners, too, looked. What they saw was not particularly reassuring--only another very ferocious appearing and exceeding wrathful pirate followed by a half dozen other villains. He rushed into the midst of the group, knocking men to right and left. The wicked looking fellows who had bullied and cowed the frightened prisoners but a few moments before now looked the picture of abject terror. The chief came to a halt before the man with the bared parang. His face was livid, and working spasmodically with rage and excitement. He tried to speak, and then he turned his eyes upon Thandar, standing there bound ready for decapitation. As his gaze fell upon this prisoner his eyes went wide, and then he turned upon the would-be executioner, and with a mighty blow felled him. That seemed to loose his tongue, and from his mouth flowed a torrent of the most awful abuse the prisoners had ever heard. It was directed toward the men who had dared contemplate this thing without his sanction, and principally against the cowering unfortunate who had not dared rise from where his chief's heavy fist had sprawled him. "And you would have killed Thandar," he shrieked. "Thandar, who saved my life!" And then he fell to kicking the prostrate man until Thandar himself was forced to intercede in the wretch's behalf.