the skimming of myriads of birds above the tree-tops and shy wild
animals gliding noiselessly in the dark of the forest--there was nothing
more now. It seemed that no human foot had ever trodden that region.

Hillyard's holiday was coming to an end, for in a month the rainy season
would begin and this great park become a marsh. He went fluctuating
between an excited eagerness for a renewal of rivalry and the
interchange of ideas and the companionship of women; and a reluctance to
leave a country which had so restored him to physical well-being. Never
had he been so strong. He had recaptured, after his five years of London
confinement, the swift spring of the muscles, the immediate response of
the body to the demand made upon it, and the glorious cessation of
fatigue when after arduous hours of heat and exertion he stretched
himself upon his camp-chair in the shadow of his tent. On the whole he
travelled northwards reluctantly; until he came to a little open space
ten days away from the first village he would touch.

He camped there just before noon, and at three o'clock on the following
morning, in the company of his shikari, his skinner and his donkey-boy
he was riding along a narrow path high above the river. It was very
dark, so that even with the vast blaze of stars overhead, Hillyard could
hardly see the flutter of his shikari's white robe a few paces ahead of
him. They passed a clump of bushes and immediately afterwards heard a
great shuffling and lapping of water below them. The shikari stopped
abruptly and seized the bridle of Hillyard's donkey. The night was so
still that the noise at the water's edge below seemed to fill the world.
Hillyard slipped off the back of his donkey and took his rifle from his
boy.

"_Gamus!_" whispered the shikari.