"It is arranged," said Lim Tock. "You agree to take the white women off our hands?"
"Yes; and to ask no other share of the rewards."
Lim Tock inclined his head and passed on around to the starboard passage. There he came upon Gajah, the serang, busy doing nothing. To him Lim Tock spoke in High Malay, a tongue which very few men know or understand, even in the island seas.
"Abdullah suspects nothing. His boxes will be rich plunder. Let him be the first to fall, and his children after him—a clean sweep."
"And the woman, his wife?" asked the Lascar serang.
"She has borne many and is past pleasing. Let her accompany Abdullah."
The serang nodded indifferently and Lim Tock went his way.
While men thus talked and schemed and counseled together alow and aloft, Jim Barnes slept.