Ahead was darkness; but not so dark when he came to it that the track was invisible.  He was at the limit of his intention, but now he saw that that had been a childish project.  He would go on, he would walk right into the jungle.  His first disinclination was conquered, and the soft intoxication of the subtropical moonshine was in his blood. . . .  But he wished he could walk as a spirit walks, without this noise of leaves. . . .

Yes, this was very wonderful and beautiful, and there must always be jungles for men to walk in.  Always there must be jungles. . . .

Some small beast snarled and bolted from under his feet.  He stopped sharply.  He had come into a darkness under great boughs, and now he stood still as the little creature scuttled away.  Beyond the track emerged into a dazzling whiteness. . . .

In the stillness he could hear the deer belling again in the distance, and then came a fuss of monkeys in a group of trees near at hand.  He remained still until this had died away into mutterings.

Then on the verge of movement he was startled by a ripe mango that slipped from its stalk and fell out of the tree and struck his hand.  It took a little time to understand that, and then he laughed, and his muscles relaxed, and he went on again.

A thorn caught at him and he disentangled himself.

He crossed the open space, and the moon was like a great shield of light spread out above him.  All the world seemed swimming in its radiance.  The stars were like lamps in a mist of silvery blue.

The track led him on across white open spaces of shrivelled grass and sand, amidst trees where shadows made black patternings upon the silver, and then it plunged into obscurities.  For a time it lifted, and then on one hand the bush fell away, and he saw across a vast moonlit valley wide undulations of open cultivation, belts of jungle, copses, and a great lake as black as ebony.  For a time the path ran thus open, and then the jungle closed in again and there were more thickets, more levels of grass, and in one place far overhead among the branches he heard and stood for a time perplexed at a vast deep humming of bees. . . .

Presently a black monster with a hunched back went across his path heedless of him and making a great noise in the leaves.  He stood quite still until it had gone.  He could not tell whether it was a boar or hyaena; most probably, he thought, a boar because of the heaviness of its rush.

The path dropped downhill for a time, crossed a ravine, ascended.  He passed a great leafless tree on which there were white flowers.  On the ground also, in the darkness under the tree, there were these flowers; they were dropping noiselessly, and since they were visible in the shadows, it seemed to him that they must be phosphorescent.  And they emitted a sweetish scent that lay heavily athwart the path.  Presently he passed another such tree.  Then he