To examine every sand patch and tree-covered shoal in the China Sea was an impossible task. All the Orient could do was to visit the principal islands and institute inquiries among the fishermen and small traders. At last, the previous night, a Malay, tempted by hope of reward, boarded the vessel when lying at anchor off the large island away to the south, and told the captain a wondrous tale of a devil-haunted place inhabited by two white spirits, a male and a female, whither a local pirate named Taung S'Ali had gone by chance with his men and suffered great loss. But Taung S'Ali was bewitched by the female spirit, and had returned there, with a great force, swearing to capture her or perish. The spirits, the Malay said, had dwelt upon the island for many years. His father and grandfather knew the place and feared it. Taung S'Ali would never be seen again.
This queer yarn was the first indication they received of the whereabouts of any persons who might possibly be shipwrecked Europeans, though not survivors from the Sirdar. Anyhow, the tiny dot lay in the vessel's northward track, so a course was set to arrive off the island soon after dawn.
Events on shore, as seen by the officer on watch, told their own tale. Wherever Dyaks are fighting there is mischief on foot, so the Orient took a hand in the proceedings.
But Sir Arthur Deane, after an agonized scrutiny of the weird-looking persons escorted by the sailors to the water's edge, sadly acknowledged that neither of these could be the daughter whom he sought. He bowed his head in humble resignation, and he thought he was the victim of a cruel hallucination when Iris's tremulous accents reached his ears—
"Father, father! Don't you know me?"
He stood up, amazed and trembling.
"Yes, father dear. It is I, your own little girl given back to you. Oh dear! Oh dear! I cannot see you for my tears."
They had some difficulty to keep him in the boat, and the man pulling stroke smashed a stout oar with the next wrench.
And so they met at last, and the sailors left them alone, to crowd round Anstruther and ply him with a hundred questions. Although he fell in with their humor, and gradually pieced together the stirring story which was supplemented each instant by the arrival of disconsolate Dyaks and the comments of the men who returned from cave and beach, his soul was filled with the sight of Iris and her father, and the happy, inconsequent demands with which each sought to ascertain and relieve the extent of the other's anxiety.
Then Iris called to him—