pale space of moonlight and the clumsy outlines of the village well.
The clustering village itself slept in darkness beyond the mango
trees, and still remoter the black encircling jungle closed in. One
might have fancied this was the encampment of newly-come invaders,
were it not for the larger villages that are overgrown with thickets
and altogether swallowed up again in the wilderness, and for the
deserted temples that are found rent asunder by the roots of trees
and the ancient embankments that hold water only for the drinking of
the sambur deer. . . .

Benham turned his face to the dim jungle again. . . .

He had come far out of his way to visit this strange world of the
ancient life, that now recedes and dwindles before our new
civilization, that seems fated to shrivel up and pass altogether
before the dry advance of physical science and material
organization. He was full of unsatisfied curiosities about its
fierce hungers and passions, its fears and cruelties, its instincts
and its well-nigh incommunicable and yet most precious
understandings. He had long ceased to believe that the wild beast
is wholly evil, and safety and plenty the ultimate good for men. . . .

Perhaps he would never get nearer to this mysterious jungle life
than he was now.

It was intolerably tantalizing that it should be so close at hand
and so inaccessible. . . .

As Benham sat brooding over his disappointment the moon, swimming on
through the still circle of the hours, passed slowly over him. The