As Benham sat brooding over his disappointment the moon, swimming on through the still circle of the hours, passed slowly over him.  The lights and shadows about him changed by imperceptible gradations and a long pale alley where the native cart track drove into the forest, opened slowly out of the darkness, slowly broadened, slowly lengthened.  It opened out to him with a quality of invitation. . . .

There was the jungle before him.  Was it after all so inaccessible?

“Come!” the road said to him.

Benham rose and walked out a few paces into the moonlight and stood motionless.

Was he afraid?

Even now some hungry watchful monster might lurk in yonder shadows, watching with infinite still patience.  Kepple had told him how they would sit still for hours—­staring unblinkingly as cats stare at a fire—­and then crouch to advance.  Beneath the shrill overtone of the nightjars, what noiseless grey shapes, what deep breathings and cracklings and creepings might there not be? . . .

Was he afraid?

That question determined him to go.

He hesitated whether he should take a gun.  A stick?  A gun, he knew, was a dangerous thing to an inexperienced man.  No!  He would go now, even as he was with empty hands.  At least he would go as far as the end of that band of moonlight.  If for no other reason than because he was afraid.  Now!

For a moment it seemed to him as though his feet were too heavy to lift and then, hands in pockets, khaki-clad, an almost invisible figure, he strolled towards the cart-track.

Come to that, he halted for a moment to regard the distant fires of the men.  No one would miss him.  They would think he was in his tent.  He faced the stirring quiet ahead.  The cart-track was a rutted path of soft, warm sand, on which he went almost noiselessly.  A bird squabbled for an instant in a thicket.  A great white owl floated like a flake of moonlight across the track and vanished without a sound among the trees.

Along the moonlit path went Benham, and when he passed near trees his footsteps became noisy with the rustle and crash of dead leaves.  The jungle was full of moonlight; twigs, branches, creepers, grass-clumps came out acutely vivid.  The trees and bushes stood in pools of darkness, and beyond were pale stretches of misty moonshine and big rocks shining with an unearthly lustre.  Things seemed to be clear and yet uncertain.  It was as if they dissolved or retired a little and then returned to solidity.

A sudden chattering broke out overhead, and black across the great stars soared a flying squirrel and caught a twig, and ran for shelter.  A second hesitated in a tree-top and pursued.  They chased each other and vanished abruptly.  He forgot his sense of insecurity in the interest of these active little silhouettes.  And he noted how much bigger and more wonderful the stars can look when one sees them through interlacing branches.