It came at last some hours later.  We were out of the forest now, and there was the moon rising, past her full but still very bright.  Her light showed me that we were on a wild moorland, swampy, with scattered trees growing here and there, across which what seemed to be a game track ran down hill.  That was all I could make out.  Here the escort halted, and Simba the King said in a sullen voice: 

“Dismount and go your ways, evil spirits, for we travel no farther across this place which is haunted.  Follow the track and it will lead you to a lake.  Pass the lake and by morning you will come to the river beyond which lies the country of your friends.  May its waters swallow you if you reach them.  For learn, there is one who watches on this road whom few care to meet.”

As he finished speaking men sprang at us and, pulling us from the horses, thrust us out of their company.  Then they turned and in another minute were lost in the darkness, leaving us alone.

“What now, friend Marut?” I asked.

“Now, Lord, all we can do is to go forward, for if we stay here Simba and his people will return and kill us at the daylight.  One of them said so to me.”

“Then, ‘come on, Macduff,’” I exclaimed, stepping out briskly, and though he had never read Shakespeare, Marut understood and followed.

“What did Simba mean about ’one on the road whom few care to meet’?” I asked over my shoulder when we had done half a mile or so.

“I think he meant the elephant Jana,” replied Marut with a groan.

“Then I hope Jana isn’t at home.  Cheer up, Marut.  The chances are that we shall never meet a single elephant in this big place.”

“Yet many elephants have been here, Lord,” and he pointed to the ground.  “It is said that they come to die by the waters of the lake and this is one of the roads they follow on their death journey, a road that no other living thing dare travel.”

“Oh!” I exclaimed.  “Then after all that was a true dream I had in the house in England.”

“Yes, Lord, because my brother Harut once lost his way out hunting when he was young and saw what his mind showed you in the dream, and what we shall see presently, if we live to come so far.”

I made no reply, both because what he said was either true or false, which I should ascertain presently, and because I was engaged in searching the ground with my eyes.  He was right; many elephants had travelled this path—­one quite recently.  I, a hunter of those brutes, could not be deceived on this point.  Once or twice also I thought that I caught sight of the outline of some tall creature moving silently through the scattered thorns a couple of hundred yards or so to our right.  It might have been an elephant or a giraffe, or perhaps nothing but a shadow, so I said nothing.  As I heard no noise I was inclined to believe the latter explanation.  In any case, what was the good of speaking?  Unarmed and solitary amidst unknown dangers, our position was desperate, and as Marut’s nerve was already giving out, to emphasize its horrors to him would be mere foolishness.