right, then "the Governor"--as he called his father, with the friendly
affection of a good comrade, and as all others in Mandakan called him
because of his position--the Governor then would say that whatever harm
he had done indirectly was now undone.

He got down at the Koongat Bridge, and his fingers were still in the
sorrel's mane when he heard the call of a bittern from the river bank.
He did not loose his fingers, but stood still and listened intently, for
there was scarcely a sound of the plain, the river, or jungle he did not
know, and his ear was keen to balance 'twixt the false note and the true.
He waited for the sound again. From that first call he could not be sure
which had startled him--the night was so still--the voice of a bird or
the call between men lying in ambush. He tried the trigger of his pistol
softly, and prepared to mount. As he did so, the call rang out across
the water again, a little louder, a little longer.

Now he was sure. It was not from a bittern--it was a human voice,
of whose tribe he knew not--Pango Dooni's, Boonda Broke's, the Dakoon's,
or the segments of peoples belonging to none of these--highway robbers,
cattle-stealers, or the men of the jungle, those creatures as wild and
secret as the beasts of the bush and more cruel and more furtive.

The fear of the ambushed thing is the worst fear of this world--the sword
or the rifle-barrel you cannot see and the poisoned wooden spear which
the men of the jungle throw gives a man ten deaths, instead of one.

Cumner's Son mounted quickly, straining his eyes to see and keeping his
pistol cocked. When he heard the call a second time he had for a moment
a thrill of fear, not in his body, but in his brain. He had that fatal
gift, imagination, which is more alive than flesh and bone, stronger than