ommon to most Britishers, which had caused him to try and
find the Hindu temple under the guidance of an unknown native.

He mentally reviewed his journey from the boat to the temple, fighting
through the tiger-grass, breaking through the delicate impeding
branches of the sundri trees, crushing the sundri breathers under his
heavy boots as he tramped behind the guide, having failed to notice,
owing to the resemblance that exists between one ordinary native and
the next, that the guide and coolie of the jungle were not the guide
and coolie of the paddle boat.

He remembered that once he had stopped dead and laid a detaining hand
on the guide's shoulder, as through the darkening forest had come a
cry, eerie as it wailed through the shadows, to be taken up ahead of
them, and echoed and re-echoed until it became faint in the distance
and died away altogether.

"What's that?"

The native had not hesitated.

"The cry, O Sahib, Protector of the poor, of the jungle owl as it seeks
its food!"

Cuxson, unobservant for once, and anxious to get to the end of the
trail again failed to notice that it was still far too light for any
member of the owl family to be abroad.

Also, when he sat down on a fallen tree trunk to readjust his boot
strap, he had mistaken for the booming of a huge jungle insect
something which whizzed through the space where his head had been a
second before.

It is true he had questioned the guide as to the route they were
taking, pointing out that it was not the one traversed in the _shikar_.

To which the guide had replied that doubtless the _shikari_ had taken
the sahibs many miles out of their way to ensure a big toll to the
sahibs' guns, and those of the mem-sahibs.

Jan Cuxson had accepted every explanation.

Extraordinary is this complacent sense of security of the British male
when he butts into the paths and customs of countries of which he knows
literally _nothing_; and he had arrived at the temple all in good time.

Silence, intense and rather overwhelming, had hung about the forbidding
place which allied to the abomination of desolation had disconcerted
him, and made him turn to the guide for further reference.

He had frowned, and involuntarily recoiled towards the wall when he
found that his guide had disappeared, and that he stood alone in the
heart of the jungle.

But strangely enough, even as he stood staring at a white wall in front
of him, a sudden apathy had fallen upon him,