All that night preceding the eventful day I slept very little. Though I lay under his coat, Ghond had no knowledge that I was awake. You cannot sleep next to the heart of a man who runs like a stag, climbs trees like a squirrel or picks up strange dogs for company every half hour.... Ghond's heart thumped so hard now and then that you might have heard it yards away. He did another thing that was not conducive to sleep at such close quarters; he breathed irregularly all that night. Sometimes he inhaled long breaths. Sometimes he breathed fast as a mouse fleeing from a cat. I might as well have tried to sleep on a storm in the sky as under the coat of such a man. "Then that dog! Shall I ever forget him? I was frightened when Ghond first annexed him but he got no scent from my body, and the air that rose from below told me that somehow, like a clean-smelling ghost, he had come to befriend us. His footsteps I will remember all my life. He walked softly as a cat. He must have been a savage dog, for dogs that live in civilization are noisy. They cannot even walk quietly. Man's company is corrupting: every animal, excepting cats, becomes careless and noisy in human society. But that dog was quite wild. He walked without noise. He breathed without any sound. Then how did I know that he was there? It was that odour that came up from the ground and greeted my nostrils. "After a sleepless and most uncomfortable night Ghond let me go and I could hardly recognize the place where he had released me. So I flew from tree to tree to find my bearings, which only drove fright into my very soul. For now that day had broken, the trees were filling up with eyes. Strange blue eyes were looking through tubes in different directions. There were men behind them and one was looking from a tree-top about a foot from where I perched. He had not heard my coming, on account of all those metal dogs barking around us--puff papapa-pack! "But as I flew up he saw me. I felt that if I did not make haste and hide under other trees he would shoot me, and he did fire many times but I was behind a copse thick as the matted hair of a hermit. I decided to hop from tree to tree, not flying until the prospect was free of danger. I spent no little time in going about half a mile that way. At last my feet felt very fatigued and I decided to fly, danger or no danger. "Fortunately no one had seen me fly up. I rose high after making large circles in the air. From a place whence the forest of trees appeared small as saplings, I looked in different directions. Far off in the east like chariots of gold flew a flock of aeroplanes against the dawning sky. That meant the enemy's coming upon me if I waited much longer. So I started westward. That seemed to be the signal for a thousand sharp-shooters on tree tops to fire at me.