ght came, and the
hills were alive with strange noises, as the red moon, nearly at her
full, rose over Chitor. To the low hills of the mad geological
formation, the tumbled strata that seem to obey no law, succeeded level
ground, the pasture lands of Mewar, cut by the Beruch and Wyan, streams
running over smooth water-worn rock, and, as the heavy embankments and
ample waterways showed, very lively in the rainy season.

In this region occurred the last and most inauspicious omen of all.
Something had gone wrong with a crupper, a piece of blue and white
punkah-cord. The Englishman pointed it out, and the driver, descending,
danced on that lonely road an unholy dance, singing the while: "The
_dumchi_![8] The _dumchi_! The _dumchi_!" in a shrill voice. Then he
returned and drove on, while the Englishman wondered into what land of
lunatics he was heading. At an average speed of six miles an hour, it is
possible to see a great deal of the country; and, under brilliant
moonlight, Mewar was desolately beautiful. There was no night traffic on
the road, no one except the patient sowar, his shadow an inky blot on
white, cantering twenty yards behind. Once the tonga strayed into a
company of date trees that fringed the path, and once rattled through a
little town, and once the ponies shied at what the driver said was a
rock. But It jumped up in the moonlight and went away.

[8] The crupper.

Then came a great blasted heath whereon nothing was more than six inches
high--a wilderness covered with grass and low thorn; and here, as nearly
as might be midway between Chitor and Udaipur, the Wheel of Fate, which
had been for some time beating against the side of the tonga, came off,
and Her Majesty's mails, two bags including parcels, collapsed on the
wayside: while the Englishman repented him that he had neglected the
omens of the vultures and the raven, the low-caste man and the mad
driver.

There was a consultation and an examination of the wheel, but the whole
tonga was rotten, and the axle was smashed and the axle pins were bent
and nearly red-hot. "It is nothing," said the driver, "the mail often
does this. What is a wheel?" He took a big stone and began hammering
proudly on the tire, to show that that at least was sound. A hasty
court-martial revealed that there was absolutely not one single relief
vehicle on the whole road between Chitor and Udaipur.

Now this wilderness was so utterly waste that not even the barking of a
do