The Chinaman's face was a ghostly gray, but very firm.
"Allah wills I stay here," he replied. His lips curled with a calm contemptuousness at the white man's inability to rob him of the place in heaven that he believed his murders had made for him. With that smile on his lips he died.
A sudden silence came upon the crowd. Even Jahi's Dyaks, scarcely restrained by their powerful chief before this, ceased their mutterings and looked with new respect on the big orang blanda resident. There were no more refusals among the Chinese. On instructions from Peter Gross four of them were left unbound to carry the body of their dead comrade to Bulungan. "Alive or dead," he had said. So it would be all understood.
CHAPTER XXVI
"To Half of My Kingdom—"
Captain Carver selected a cigar from Peter Gross's humidor and reclined in the most comfortable chair in the room.
"A beastly hot day," he announced, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. "Regular Manila weather."
"The monsoon failed us again to-day," Peter Gross observed.
Carver dropped the topic abruptly. "I dropped over," he announced, "to see if the juragan talked any."