_Brr-aaam! Brr-aam! Brr-aam!_ The detonation was frightful, riving the lakatoi apart in great splinters of logs and planks as the grenades exploded. Men, sails, and spars were torn apart in livid flashes of blinding light. The concussion knocked down the combatants on their own ship, while a giant, foamy wave leaped out of the sea and engulfed them, the water falling on the fighting men in the waist like a deluge. Terror-stricken, the boarders gave back, falling like flies before the busy parangs, the survivors leaping headlong into the sea. Of the lakatoi there was nothing left but a mass of floating fragments. In a moment more it was all over and the crew stood breathing heavily, looking at the curator with broad grins of delight. “Welcome to New Guinea!” laughed the curator, grimly, standing with a fourth hand grenade in his grip, its firing mechanism still unarmed. “I guess that will be about all, Captain,” he said to the _jurugan_, who stood nursing a cut shoulder. “Stop those fellows!” he ordered, for the guns were beginning to bark again at the survivors of the lakatoi swimming in the water. “Let ’em get ashore and tell all about it. Ought to give us quite a rep! How did you make out, boys?” he asked, turning to them coolly. “This was nothing compared with some of our trench parties.” “Nice souvenir you’ve got, sir!” grinned Nicky, pointing to the long arrow still sticking in the curator’s helmet. “Dwight and I got off easy. They didn’t seem to pay much attention to us. Never saw a firearm before, I suppose. A lot of the crew seem dead or wounded, though, and I saw Baderoon go down.” “Get hold of Sadok, when you can,” ordered the curator. “I see he’s busy in the waist. And have them bring Baderoon into the deck house.” Some of the crew were now cleaning up the waist and others were hoisting the anchor by its primitive wooden windlass so as to sail the proa farther up the lagoon. Sadok came up, breathing happily through his wide Malay nostrils. “Me have’m lov’y fight, _Orang-kaya_!” he beamed. “Catch’m three head!” He grinned, holding up the gory trophies for them to admire. “But you, _Orang-kaya_!” His eyes looked adoringly at the curator. “White man debbil-debbil verree strong! Him fight like hell!” IV NICK ENCOUNTERS A DEATH ADDER Baderoon was carried into the deck house, his long, muscular Papuan frame livid and limp. His rattan shield and bow were borne by Sadok, but from his wrist still dangled a long war club captured by him during the fight. It was of stout ironwood, with a head made of a thick disk of a stone like jade. The club was ornamented with rows of boars’ tusks dangling from its handle, alternating with tufts of human hair, and a stout strap held it to the wrist at its handle. Dwight remembered having a glimpse of Baderoon crashing valiantly through the pirate swarm with it, after his arrows were all shot away.