Peter Gross shouted again to the juragan, and instructed him that every man leaving the proa must stand on the rail, in full sight of those on shore, and show that he was weaponless before descending into the sampan. The juragan consented.
It required five trips to the doomed ship before all on board were taken off. There were thirty-seven in all—eleven sailors and the rest off-scourings of the Java and Celebes seas, whose only vocation was cutting throats. They glared at their captors like tigers; it was more than evident that practically all of them except the juragan fully expected to meet the same fate that they meted out to every one who fell into their hands, and were prepared to sell their lives as dearly as possible.
"A nasty crew," Carver remarked to Peter Gross as the pirates were herded on the beach under the rifles of his company. "Every man's expecting to be handed the same dose as he's handed some poor devil. I wonder why they didn't sink with their ship?"
Peter Gross did not stop to explain, although he knew the reason why—the Mohammedan's horror of having his corpse pass into the belly of a shark.
"We've got to tie them up and make a chain-gang of them," Carver said thoughtfully. "I wouldn't dare go through the jungle with that crew any other way."
Peter Gross was looking at Jahi, in earnest conversation with several of his tribesmen. He perceived that the hill chief had all he could do to restrain his people from falling on the pirates, long their oppressors.
"I will speak to them," he announced quietly. He stepped forward.
"Servants of Ah Sing," he shouted in an authoritative tone. All eyes were instantly focused on him.
"Servants of Ah Sing," he repeated, "the fortunes of war have this day made you my captives. You must go with me to Bulungan. If you will not go, you shall die here."
A simultaneous movement affected the pirates. They clustered more closely together, fiercely defiant, and stared with the fatalistic indifference of Oriental peoples into the barrels of the rifles aimed at them.