The order to take cover was given barely in time, for from every tree and bush along the creek flew showers of small arrows and throwing spears that whizzed and whirred over the crouching crew. And ever the flames leaped higher. From a source unseen, but cunningly selected to utilize wind and stream, fresh oil was poured on the water; the sides of the brigantine crackled and blistered with an overpowering stench of tar and oakum.

Seek as they might, their enemies remained invisible, and still the shower of missiles kept up its intensity until the decks rang and pattered with their falling, and left no space of a yard in area where a man might stand safely. Barry watched through a scupper port, trying to detect any one place from which arrows came thicker than elsewhere; and at last, when one after another his white companions had called to him about the precarious situation of launch and boat, he decided he had found it.

"Here, all hands," he ordered, and shoved his rifle out of the scupper. "Get an ax, Rolfe, and burst out a plank of the bulwarks." The ax was swung, and a plank crashed into splinters, leaving a narrow loophole, a foot wide and twelve feet long, through which the roaring flames darted viciously. "When I give the word, all aim at that tree—" he pointed out a round-headed, dwarfed clump of foliage that seemed to hiss with twanging bowstrings—"then fire all together. That's the next best thing to a riot gun I can think of." The crew crouched along the broken plank, every muzzle converged on to a patch of leafy concealment a fathom square, and the skipper barked:

"Fire!"

Twenty rifles crashed in one tremendous discharge, and the tree ceased to vomit arrows as if suddenly capped with a vast extinguisher. But at the same moment the flames roared in through the broken bulwarks and drove every man away, scorched and singed. Houten handled his rifle expertly and unhurriedly, though his fat face and immense body streamed sweat at every pore, and his clothes were steaming with the fierce heat. Blood dripped from his injured arm, but gave him not the slightest concern. He said nothing, did not attempt to advise Barry, simply kept up his end as one man of the crew, as if the last thing on earth he worried about was the imminent destruction of thousands of guilders in property. And Barry gave him silent thanks, untrammelled in his command of the unequal fight. His own keen eyes told him the Barang was doomed; and any chance remaining for the crew hinged on that big launch alongside. He peered over the rail. The launch was smoking. Her line was almost burned through.

"Gordon and Little, follow me quickly," he cried, swiftly making his decision. "Rolfe, Blunt, haul in on that line—easy now, or you'll break it—and Mr. Houten, here's my cabin key. Take some men and get your gold dust out of the safe."

Houten's streaming face lighted in a fat smile, and he beamed his appreciation of Barry's thoughtfulness for his employer's interests under the terrible circumstances. The mate and Bill Blunt hauled cautiously on the launch painter until the big boat bumped alongside, her white paint blistered and blackened, her white canvas awning a tattered torch of smoldering rags. Then Barry sprang up, threw himself over the rail, and Little and Gordon followed in silence. A small brown man jumped after them and went directly to the launch's engine.

"Good man!" breathed Little, suddenly realizing that none of the others knew anything about a steam engine. He gasped and gazed in awe at a tongue of fire that snaked up the brigantine's side, twisted about the fore rigging and roared about the tall masts of pine.

The fires were banked. The native engineer opened them up and applied a small patent blower, while Barry and his companions crouched behind the engine casing and kept their guns popping until steam began to hiss. On board the ship the mates leaped from line to line, cutting adrift those that had withstood the fire, and soon the current took hold and moved her towards the entrance. Now that the creek was ablaze with light, it was seen that the entrance cut through Vandersee's agency was simply a channel scythed through the matted weeds and grasses, big enough to admit the vessel if the way remained unobstructed. But the creek's usually sluggish current was trebled in velocity by the outside siphon effect of the rapid river rushing past the narrow entrance. The matted grasses could be seen waving and writhing under the swift flow with a terrible suggestion of remorseless power in their stems should any unfortunate chance to be plunged among them.

Houten staggered on deck, followed by the men laden with the small, heavy canvas bags taken by Little from the post. He stood a moment, gazing abroad at the fiery expanse. He noted Barry's intention of towing the brigantine out, and now he asserted his authority as owner.

"Don't bodder for the ship, Captain Barry," he shouted. "Take eferybotty in dot launch to the odder side ouf the riffer. Neffer mind why. I schall tell you in goot time. Let the ship drift by herself where she will."

"Then get a move on, all hands!" shouted Barry. "This launch will be ablaze too in five minutes."

Gordon left their task of pouring water over the straining towline they had fastened around the red-hot brass bits and tore down the scraps of fiery canvas from overhead. From the brigantine men leaped into the smaller craft, kept in order and saved from panic by sturdy old Blunt's cool advice, backed up by his never-failing good humor. And when Rolfe and Houten and the old seaman alone remained, the launch was loaded to her utmost capacity and was on fire in a dozen places.

"Come on down with you!" roared Barry angrily, for the three men left were playing dignity, each seeking to be the last man to quit. "Blunt, Rolfe, take told of Mr. Houten and dump him in if he won't move."

"Here ye go then, sir, excusin' me," said Bill, seizing the huge Dutchman by an arm. Rolfe took the other one, the injured one, and Houten laughed shakily and shook loose rather than suffer from the mate's determined grip.

"Yoomp, with you den," he rumbled and mounted the rail. The others were with him, and as all three poised to jump, the foremast fell with a terrific smash, erupting sparks and flame, covering the decks and the water around with fragments of fiery splinters, charred blocks, and smoking serpents of rope.

"Oh, jump together!" Barry screamed, dancing on his own hot place and blowing on his hands which were in agony from contact with the metal wheel. The three leaped; and the launch's stern dipped perilously under the tremendous influx of weight; the flaming oil alongside licked ravenously at their smaller and nearer prey.

"Now keep your guns shooting!" was the skipper's final order, and he sent the launch straight for the entrance, while the unseen foes on the banks transferred their aim from the brigantine and made the forest ring with their howls of rage.

In the narrowed entrance, forced to scrape the matted grass by the eddying current, the launch soon resounded with the cries of wounded seamen. Barry kept his hands on the wheel by sheer force of will, for the little circle of brass scorched to the touch. The rifles burned the hands of the men who used them; native riflemen began to look piteously at their white leaders, afraid to slip fresh cartridges into smoking breeches. And the arrows fell thicker than ever, the smoke from the launch's furnace streamed away full of flame, the boat itself roared and crackled from the water line to the gunwale. But the oil thinned out as they sped; those rifles that kept shooting took heavier toll as the range closed, and Barry prayed that his hands would hold out. His white companions stood grimly to their guns, uttering no sound save to encourage and soothe the natives. Then a cartridge exploded in a man's hand, and the rifle was flung overboard with a howl of terror. Still another shell burst with the fierce heat, and panic threatened. Bill Blunt stopped it.

"Here ye go, then, Bullies!" he roared, flinging down his own gun. "Put 'em down, me sons, and git busy like me. Here's th' river close aboard, lads, an' in a minit ye'll all be freezin'."

Tearing off his jacket he dragged it in the river when he came to a spot bare of oil, then fell heartily to work beating down the fire along the gunwale. The seamen gained heart, once safely quit of their dangerous rifles, and followed the old fellow's lead, until the business of fire-fighting drove from their minds the fear of flying missiles from shoreward.

"Here iss the riffer, mine friendts," Houten rumbled at last, and the launch shot into the main stream, drawing thin threads of fire into her eddying wake, leaving behind her the flying death and the devouring blaze. Barry guided his craft straight over the river to the farther bank, seeking for relief to his burning eyes in the cool blackness of night. His hair and eyebrows were singed off close, his skin was a scorched torment; but a glance at his companions proved that others had suffered too, and he held on to his fast-cooling steering wheel while old Bill Blunt led a final attack on the clinging fire about the launch.

They shot into the shadow of the bank and looked back on a scene of terrific grandeur. As their faces cooled, and the air revived their dulled vitality, a deeper significance in the picture came home to them. For some minutes their brains could only grasp the fact that they had escaped the fire as well as their enemies' range; but a shaft of fire roared up through the trees, and the howl that responded hinted at the truth.

"Gee! They're getting roasted in their own fire!" gasped Little.

So it was. The jungle on all sides of the creek began to blaze, and the roar filled the river channel. At first only small patches of dead wood and leaves burned, but when great hanging masses of moss caught fire, the jungle drew the flames like a huge furnace, and in some of the trees a score of men were trapped.

"Poor devils! Dose mans are murdered by Leyden," growled Houten. "He shall pay, jah! It iss on his bill."

But despite the awful peril facing them, the little brown men over on the creek worked on as if with a definite aim beyond the mere destruction of a ship and the dispersing of her crew. Figures dancing in the firelight were feverishly busy about the creek entrance, towards which the blazing Barang was drifting, gathering speed with every fathom by which she drew nearer to the tremendously faster river stream outside. Gradually the surface oil about the vessel thinned out and died, as if the supply had been suddenly cut off. And the moment the water ceased to blaze, canoes shot out from the shore, and frantic little savages pushed and hauled at the bigger craft in obvious anxiety that she should not reach out beyond the entrance. They succeeded in pushing her on to the edge of the cleared channel, then the swift current gripped her, swung her broadside in the entrance against the matted grasses, and there she lay, heeling over slowly, burning away merrily above water, but safe to stay there in the opposing elements of fire and water whose contest must come to a climax when fire reached water line.

"There goes the old Barang, sir," groaned Barry, his thoughts on his ship as a good shipmaster's should be. "I could have saved her by towing her out and sinking her. No trouble at all to raise her again. Did it before, you know. Now she's gone."

"It iss better so," replied Houten. The amazing man was scanning the nearby shore and gave no glance to his ruined ship. The skipper stared at him blankly, meanwhile swabbing at his burns with oiled waste. "Yat, it iss better so, mine friendt. It wass not arranged like this, but it iss much better so, now ve haf lost no mans, after all. Schall ve put into dot schmall cove dere, captain? It vill hide us from the riffer, unt pretty soon our friendts vill be dere. The boat iss too full; unt dese mans need cool grass."

Barry picked out the cove indicated, immediately opposite the flaming creek, hidden from riverwards by an outflung, bush-capped hummock of earth. There the launch was moored, and the last trace of fire danger was beaten out with wet grasses and leafy branches. Of the entire party but five men had escaped unhurt, but none of the hurts were more serious than Houten's flesh wound unless the arrow that Gordon still carried neatly spiked between two ribs proved serious. But Bill Blunt thought not, and Houten produced his medical and surgical kit from the launch in order that Bill's assertion might be tested. The seamen soothed each other's burns, and those of them who had received arrow or spear wounds waited in fear for the result of Blunt's attentions to Gordon.

"Try an' laugh out loud, sir," muttered old Bill, as he snapped off the arrow stem and Gordon winced involuntarily. "I knows it pinches, but we got to fix up them natives too, an' them ain't werry brave, sir. Grin, won't ye?"

Gordon laughed, but his lip ran blood. The arrowhead was pulled through and out, and the cut bound together, and after that the seamen submitted to the same surgery like sheep. Blunt kept them quiet by subtle blarney, telling them they couldn't let white folks beat them out for stoicism.

In this manner the camp settled into quiet rest, food and water, spirits and fresh clothes coming from the fully equipped launch. Then came a cry from their lookout on the hummock crest, and they climbed up beside him. The man pointed silently back over the flat country beyond the tangle of the river margin, but nothing could be distinguished in the darkness.

"No look—lissen, sar!" chattered the sailor.

There was no sound save the rustling of grasses and the lapping of waters. Then, after a moment of hush, far away in the black void a shot rang out, followed by others in swift succession. Silence again, and more shots, nearer than before, and a solitary cry. The ensuing period of quiet was longer than the last; but when again rifle shots crashed out, they were so near that the watchers on the hummock could see and count the flashes.

"Seven, I counted," said Little. "What is it?"

"Cap'n, there's men right beside us, along th' bank," Bill Blunt reported. "They ain't natives, neither. More like them navy chaps."

"Better line out in case they're like those fellows who put you on the ant hills, Barry," said Gordon anxiously. "Of course, they may be right, but—"

"Haf no fears, mine friendts," rumbled. Houten, looming up like a hill in the blackness. "All dis iss planned. Dose mans beside us are real navy mans. I toldt you all iss vell. It iss mooch better dis vay."

"Then it must be Vandersee's big drive," exclaimed Barry, suddenly enlightened. "How about a little light to help him, hey, Houten?"

"Goot. Jah, make a fire, Captain."

Rolfe and some hands hastily built a huge bonfire of dry brushwood on the damp grass behind the hummock, and beaters were set to prevent the fire spreading out of hand. Then, as a match was set to it and little tongues of flame began to take hold, Barry lined out his men and waited for a clear sight of events. Shots now crashed out so near that the men firing could be seen in the intensifying light of the crackling fire; still no shot came back in answer. The steady, relentless pursuit drew near, and the fugitives began to whimper and howl in panic. They broke and drove blindly for the river, to meet the colossal bulk of Houten, silent, impassive, standing out like a mountain to bar their flight; and the Barang's men, lined beside him, joined the first of a line of cool, steady naval seamen whose end numbers were still beyond the lighted area.

"Throw down your guns, or we'll drop you!" cried Barry, and the flying fugitives halted in dismay while two white men, the leaders, cursed them venomously and bade them fight.

"Stop, Barry, don't fire!" came back the level, placid voice of Vandersee, and then the completeness of the spider's web could be distinguished. For from up river and down, the silent line of naval seamen drew near, herding the trapped fugitives into a circle that always narrowed in diameter. Then, as the cordon seemed complete beyond escape, the two white men broke into a desperate dash and plunged for the river.

With one impulse Little and Barry sprang out to intercept them; and even in his heat the skipper wondered why, now that the time had come, neither Gordon nor Vandersee was anxious to get his hands on Leyden. For that Leyden was one of those two plunging whites neither doubted.

But Rolfe's bonfire blazed higher, and every face and form stood clearly revealed. The skipper and Tom Little hurled themselves headlong at their quarry's legs and brought them down in a smashing football tackle, then, from their position on the ground, astride of their captives, they took in the surprising circle about them. Vandersee's red, smooth face shone in a beatific smile as he directed the seizing and securing of the trapped men. He had no apparent interest in the two whites,—and an interchange of scrutiny satisfied Barry and Little that neither of their men was Leyden. Instead of giving thought to the white captives, Vandersee merely left them in their captors' hands until their turn came to be tied up, and gave Barry still another amazing shock by stepping over to Houten and embracing him in full view of all hands. And big, emotionless Houten, with no change of demeanor, returned the embrace in kind.