If a single bird had flapped its wings in the branches, if one little rodent had stirred in the underbrush, Little Shikara would likely have turned back.  But the jungle-gods, knowing their son, stilled all the forest voices.  He crept on, still looking now and again over his shoulder to see the village fire.  It still made a bright yellow triangle in the dusk behind him.  He didn’t stop to think that he was doing a thing most grown natives and many white men would not have dared to do—­to follow a jungle trail unarmed at night.  If he had stopped to think at all he simply would have been unable to go on.  He was only following his instincts, voices that such forces as maturity and grown-up intelligence and self-consciousness obscure in older men—­and the terror of the jungle could not touch him.  He went straight to do what service he could for the white sahib that was one of his lesser gods.

Time after time he halted, but always he pushed on a few more feet.  Now he was over halfway to the ford, clear to the forks in the trail.  And then he turned about with a little gasp of fear.

The light from the village had gone out.  The thick foliage of the jungle had come between.

He was really frightened now.  It wasn’t that he was afraid he couldn’t get back.  The trail was broad and hard and quite gray in the moonlight.  But those far-off beams of light had been a solace to his spirit, a reminder that he had not yet broken all ties with the village.  He halted, intending to turn back.

Then a thrill began at his scalp and went clear to his bare toes.  Faint through the jungle silences he heard Warwick Sahib calling to his faithless beaters.  The voice had an unmistakable quality of distress.

Certain of the villagers—­a very few of them—­said afterward that Little Shikara continued on because he was afraid to go back.  They said that he looked upon the Heaven-born sahib as a source of all power, in whose protection no harm could befall him, and he sped toward him because the distance was shorter than back to the haven of fire at the village.  But those who could look deeper into Little Shikara’s soul knew different.  In some degree at least he hastened on down that jungle trail of peril because he knew that his idol was in distress, and by laws that went deep he knew he must go to his aid.

V

The first few minutes after Warwick had heard a living step in the thickets he spent in trying to reload his rifle.  He carried other cartridges in the right-hand trousers pocket, but after a few minutes of futile effort it became perfectly evident that he was not able to reach them.  His right arm was useless, and the fingers of his left, lacerated by the mugger’s bite, refused to take hold.

He had, however, three of the five shells the rifle held still in his gun.  The single question that remained was whether or not they would be of use to him.