The Dyaks would come at night.

With a favorable wind they need not set sail until dusk, and their fleet sampans would easily cover the intervening forty miles in five hours.
He could not be positive that they were actual inhabitants of the islands to the south.

The China Sea swarms with wandering pirates, and the tribe whose animosity he had earned might be equally noxious to some peaceable fishing community on the coast.

Again and again he debated the advisability of constructing a seaworthy raft and endeavoring to make the passage.

But this would be risking all on a frightful uncertainty, and the accidental discovery of the Eagle's Nest had given him new hope.