Little Shikara blushed beneath the laughter.  For he was a very boyish little boy in most ways.  But it seemed to him that his sturdy young heart was about to break open from bitterness.  All of them agreed that Warwick Sahib, perhaps wounded and dying, might be lying by the ford, but none of them would venture forth to see.  Unknowing, he was beholding the expression of a certain age-old trait of human nature.  Men do not fight ably in the dark.  They need their eyes, and they particularly require a definite object to give them determination.  If these villagers knew for certain that the Protector of the Poor lay wounded or even dead beside the ford, they would have rallied bravely, encouraged one another with words and oaths, and gone forth to rescue him; but they wholly lacked the courage to venture again into the jungle on any such blind quest as Little Shikara suggested.

But the boy’s father should not have laughed.  He should have remembered the few past occasions when his straight little son had gone into the jungle alone; and that remembrance should have silenced him.  The difficulty lay in the fact that he supposed his boy and he were of the same flesh, and that Little Shikara shared his own great dread of the night-curtained jungle.  In this he was very badly mistaken.  Little Shikara had an inborn understanding and love of the jungle; and except for such material dangers as that of Nahara, he was not afraid of it at all.  He had no superstitions in regard to it.  Perhaps he was too young.  But the main thing that the laugh did was to set off, as a match sets off powder, a whole heartful of unexploded indignation in Shikara’s breast.  These villagers not only had deserted their patron and protector, but also they had laughed at the thought of rescue!  His own father had laughed at him.

Little Shikara silently left the circle of villagers and turned into the darkness.

At once the jungle silence closed round him.  He hadn’t dreamed that the noise of the villagers would die so quickly.  Although he could still see the flame of the fire at the village gate behind him, it was almost as if he had at once dropped off into another world.  Great flowers poured perfume down upon him, and at seemingly a great distance he heard the faint murmur of the wind.

At first, deep down in his heart, he had really not intended to go all the way.  He had expected to steal clear to the outer edge of the firelight; and then stand listening to the darkness for such impressions as the jungle would choose to give him.  But there had been no threshold, no interlude of preparation.  The jungle in all its mystery had folded about him at once.

He trotted softly down the elephant trail, a dim, fleet shadow that even the keen eyes of Nahara could scarcely have seen.  At first he was too happy to be afraid.  He was always happy when the jungle closed round him.  Besides, if Nahara had killed, she would be full-fed by now and not to be feared.  Little Shikara hastened on, trembling all over with a joyous sort of excitement.