All went well. At the time and place appointed, in pitch darkness, a canoe grated softly against the vessel’s side—a few whispers passed—and Kilian climbed aboard. But, as it turned out, she was not wearing only a few ornaments and a kerchief. All the family jewels, so to speak, hung about her pretty figure. She was swathed in silk, garment over garment. And Nikput handed up several baskets that must have been a very heavy load even for his stalwart frame. They had looted the paternal treasure at the Nakodah’s suggestion.

Next day passed without alarm; there are only farmhouses and villages, where a trader need not stop, between Langusan and the Brunei frontier. The fugitives remained below in the tiny cabin, amidst such heat and such surroundings that those who know may shudder to think of their situation. After dark, however, they came up, and, until he fell asleep, doubtless, Williams heard their murmuring and low happy laughter. On the morrow they would be safe.

A terrible cry awoke him—screams and trampling on the palm-leaf deck; then a great splash. Dawn was breaking, but the mists are so dense at that hour that the Malays call it white darkness. The sounds of struggle and the girl’s wild shrieks directed him; but at the first movement he was borne backwards and overthrown by a press of men stumbling through the fog, with Kilian writhing and screaming in their midst. They tossed her down into the hold and threw themselves upon him, his own servants foremost. Perhaps these saved him from the fate of poor Nikput. What could he do?—he had no arms. They swore him to silence. But in that bloody realm of Brunei to whom should a wise man complain?

All that day and the next Kilian’s shrieks never ceased. ‘She will go mad,’ Williams cried passionately; the Nakodah smiled. When her raving clamour was interrupted—died down to silence—they brought her on deck, a piteous spectacle. I have not to pain myself and my readers by imagining the contrast with the bright and lovely girl we saw a week ago.

They reached the capital, and Williams fled; of his after life I know only that he sold some orchids in Singapore. Happily the tale does not end here.

The crime would have passed unknown or unnoticed, like others innumerable of its sort in Brunei, had not Kilian avenged her own wrongs. She was raving mad for a while, but such a prize was worth nursing. Gradually she recovered her beauty and so much of her wits that the Nakodah sold her for a great sum to one of the richest nobles. A few days after, perhaps the same day, she stabbed this man and threw him from a window into the river—possibly with some distracted recollection of her lover’s fate. The Nakodah was seized and others. All the horrid story came out. They were executed, and the Sultan restored their victim—quite mad now—to her father. But on the way she leapt overboard.

[Larger Image]

CATTLEYA LABIATA. var. MEASURESIANA.
Painted from nature also Chromo by Macfarlane F.R.H.S.
Printed in London