Suddenly, without warning, Swenson and Miller fell, pierced
with savage spears, and at the same instant sinewy fingers
gripped Barbara Harding, and a silencing hand was clapped
over her mouth. There had been no sound above the muffled
tread of the seamen. It had all been accomplished so quickly
and so easily that the girl did not comprehend what had
befallen her for several minutes.
In the darkness of the forest she could not clearly distinguish
the forms or features of her abductors, though she
reasoned, as was only natural, that Skipper Simms' party had
become aware of the plot against them and had taken this
means of thwarting a part of it; but when her captors turned
directly into the mazes of the jungle, away from the coast, she
began first to wonder and then to doubt, so that presently
when a small clearing let the moonlight full upon them she
was not surprised to discover that none of the members of the
Halfmoon's company was among her guard.
Barbara Harding had not circled the globe half a dozen
times for nothing. There were few races or nations with whose
history, past and present, she was not fairly familiar, and so
the sight that greeted her eyes was well suited to fill her with
astonishment, for she found herself in the hands of what
appeared to be a party of Japanese warriors of the fifteenth or
sixteenth century.
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