The old man called them back, and presently the _orang-kaya_, or chief, came toward him, holding out his hand for more beads. It was not long before Nicky was the center of an excited throng of chattering Papuans, who fingered his clothing and pranced around him with characteristic native merriment. Nicky was a whole circus in himself, he began to appreciate. Men, women, and children never seemed to tire of standing and gazing at him, after which they would usually do a somersault or roll on the ground with explosions of boisterous laughter. To them he and his clothes were the funniest thing they had ever looked at. As it was growing late, Sadok arranged for a night’s lodgings. A space about ten by twenty feet at the end of one of the huts was cleared off and turned over to their use. Here they laid down their few belongings and sat down on mats to watch the strange life around them. A clay floor behind a partition served for a fireplace, where Sadok set about cooking the kangaroo meat. The rest of the hut was jammed with natives talking and laughing incessantly, only ceasing when their eyes were fully occupied in staring at him. In the midst of it all, a yell, “_Bajak! Bajak!_” (“Pirates! Pirates!”) arose, and everyone tumbled out of the hut and poured down to the beach. Great guard fires piled up along shore were lit, and their lurid glare lighted up the whole scene; the proas of the natives hauled up on the beach, the warriors dancing along the shore, brandishing their bows and spears and yelling defiance, and the two huts back a short distance, with the black wall of the jungle behind them, made a wild picture that long remained vivid in Nicky’s memory. Nicky and Sadok had come down, eager to be in the fray, and it seemed to the boy that never had he been in so savage a spot on the earth as in this forgotten corner of Aru, with native warriors around him and a pirate ship from the New Guinea coast somewhere out there on the sea. Presently he made her out a long double proa, or catamaran, with one big lateen sail; a small lakatoi, with at least fifty warriors in her, the _orang-kaya_ told him. She came on swiftly, under both paddles and sails, and, when some fifty yards off the beach, opened fire with the flash and bang of Singapore muskets loaded with black powder. Bows twanged all about Nicky, javelins flew through the air, Sadok’s sumpitan coughed. Some of the younger warriors turned to run at the sound of gunfire, but the older men held steady, for their homes and ships would be plundered if defeated. Nicky drew his revolver and opened fire in return. The heavy thunder of its .38 special cartridges, close at hand, made all the warriors near him jump and run, but the fact of six flashes along shore and the execution it evidently did among the pirates caused them to stop paddling and haul in sheet as the lakatoi swung around.