By evening they had reached the valley where they had first met the savages and here they prepared to spend the night. They had no sooner kindled their fires than from the darkness on every side shadowy forms silently emerged,--the savages come to visit them! They glided out of the black forest into the ring of firelight and squatted upon the ground until fully five hundred dusky faces looked out at the travelers from the gloom. It was rather an unpleasant situation, there in the depths of the forest, but Mackay turned it to good account. First he and Captain Bax made presents to the headmen and they were as pleased as children to receive the gay ornaments and bright cloth the travelers gave them. And then Mackay called their interpreter to his side and they stood up together, facing the crowd. Speaking through his interpreter, the missionary said he wished to tell them a story. These mountain savages were veritable children in their love for a story, as they were in so many other ways, and their eyes gleamed with delight. It was a wonderful story he told them, the like of which they had never heard before. It was about the great God, who had made the earth and the people on it, and was the Father of them all. He told how God loved everybody, because they were his children. Chinese, white men beyond the sea like himself and Captain Bax, the people of the mountains,--all were God's children. And so all men were brothers, and should love God their Father and each other. And because God loved his children so, he sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to live among men and to die for them. He told the story simply and beautifully, just as he would to little children, and these children of the forest listened and their savage eyes grew less fierce as they heard for the first time of the story of the Savior. The next day, after a toilsome journey, the travelers reached the plain below. They had made their dangerous trip and had escaped the head-hunters, but as fierce an enemy was lying in wait for both, an enemy that in Formosa devours native and foreigner alike. Captain Bax was the first to be attacked. All day, as they descended the mountain, the rain came down in torrents, a real Formosan rain that is like the floodgates opening. The travelers were drenched and chilly, and just as they emerged from the forest Captain Bax succumbed to the enemy. Malaria had smitten him. Shaking with chills and then burning with fever, he was placed in a sedan-chair and carried the remainder of the way, three days' journey, to the coast, where the medical attendants on board his ship cured him. Mackay was feeling desperately ill all the way across the plain, but with his usual determination he refused to give in until he almost staggered across the threshold of his home.