"You are a practised hand at it!" she said, smiling down upon his obvious annoyance at the fate in store for him. "Why shouldn't you and I head the contingent? Some one must go first!" There was nothing for it but to acquiesce; and to endure, as best he might, the torment of Quita's clear tones close behind, alternating with her husband's bass; both voices pitched too low to be articulate, Desmond followed with Mayhew, while Maurice and Elsie, and the customary string of coolies, brought up the rear. For the first few miles splashes of sunlight gleamed and quivered on the rough pathway, on red-pine stems, and moss-coated rocks. But before half their journey was accomplished, it became evident that they were not to escape the opening storm of the great monsoon. A shuddering wind set the dense pines above and below them swaying and moaning, a sound of strange and infinite melancholy. The sunlight went out like a snuffed candle; battalions of clouds, charged with electricity, rolled silently northward, obliterating all things; and an ochreous twilight settled down upon the forest. Save for the whispering of wind-tossed trees, all Nature seemed hushed, expectant, holding her breath. The dusky stillness wrought upon the nerves of the riders, producing a vague, discomfortable sense of foreboding. Talk grew fitful; and was instinctively carried on in lowered tones. "Push on a bit faster, Mrs Desmond. It would be as well to get out where the trees are thinner before the worst is upon us." Colonel Mayhew's voice had an anxious note. He had weathered the opening storm of many monsoons; but his daughter's presence wakened in him a new fear of the thunderbolts of the gods. Even as he spoke, a phosphorescent gleam sped through the trees, like a passing soul; and a threatening growl rumbled up from the South. It was the prelude. Two minutes later, rocks, stems, branches, and the minutest fir-needles that flickered against the grey, showed like ink-strokes on tarnished silver as a forked flash, leaped, quivering, from the heart of a blue-black cloud. The report that followed, after scarce five seconds of stillness, was smart, crisp, short as a revolver-shot; and long before a hundred peaks had made an end of flinging back the sound, a second flash and crash--in swifter succession--smote the eyes and ears of the riders, who now urged their horses to a canter, _saises_, coolies, and three devoted dogs panting zealously behind them. Their hope was to gain shelter in the Government woodsheds, two miles ahead, before the inevitable downpour came to drench their bodies and impede their progress. But fate was in a merciless mood on that June morning. The third flash split up the sky as a stone splits a window pane. Pulsating streaks of fire, red, green, and blue, radiated in all directions, half-blinding them with the brazen glare. And before it faded, a crackling detonation seemed to rip the very heavens from marge to marge.