All about them the huge-rooted trees
blocked their footing, while coiled and knotted climbers, of the girth of
a man's arm, were thrown from lofty branch to lofty branch, or hung in
tangled masses like so many monstrous snakes. Lush-stalked plants,
larger-leaved than the body of a man, exuded a sweaty moisture from all
their surfaces. Here and there, banyan trees, like rocky islands,
shouldered aside the streaming riot of vegetation between their crowded
columns, showing portals and passages wherein all daylight was lost and
only midnight gloom remained. Tree-ferns and mosses and a myriad other
parasitic forms jostled with gay-coloured fungoid growths for room to
live, and the very atmosphere itself seemed to afford clinging space to
airy fairy creepers, light and delicate as gem-dust, tremulous with
microscopic blooms. Pale-golden and vermilion orchids flaunted their
unhealthy blossoms in the golden, dripping sunshine that filtered through
the matted roof. It was the mysterious, evil forest, a charnel house of
silence, wherein naught moved save strange tiny birds--the strangeness of
them making the mystery more profound, for they flitted on noiseless
wings, emitting neither song nor chirp, and they were mottled with morbid
colours, having all the seeming of orchids, flying blossoms of sickness
and decay.

He was caught by surprise, fifteen feet in the air above the path, in the
forks of a many-branched tree. All saw him as he dropped like a shadow,
naked as on his natal morn, landing springily on his bent knees, and like
a shadow leaping along the run-way. It was hard for them to realize that
it was a man, for he seemed a weird jungle spirit, a goblin of the
forest. Only Binu Charley was not perturbed. He flung his poisoned
spear over the head of the captive at the flitting form. It was a mighty
cast, well intended, but the shadow, leaping, received the spear
harmlessly between the legs, and, tripping upon it, was flung sprawling.
Before he could get away, Binu Charley was upon him, clutching him by his
snow-white hair. He was only a young man, and a dandy at that, his face
blackened with charcoal, his hair whitened with wood-ashes, with the
freshly severed tail of a wild pig thrust through his perforated nose,
and two more thrust through his ears. His only other ornament was a
necklace of human finger-bones. At sight of their other prisoner he
chattered in a high querulous falsetto, with puckered brows a