Overhead the darkness grew darker, there was a curious agitation of the air, and he knew that the vast birds of the mountains--the eagle and the vulture--were flying round him in ever-narrowing circles. The dead or the dying, then, were near, and they had scented them from their eyrie in the hills. At this moment, when he had recognised the birds as blots on the blackness, and was straining his eyes to follow their flight, there was a faint glimmer of light in the east from the rising moon. Faint as it was it gave the shikari all the light he needed to enable him to see plainly. He looked up and saw a gigantic bird sailing slowly down the wind. His heart beat, and his blood seemed to bound in his veins as he watched it, for it was taking the direction whence his own sense-perception had come. A second followed, and then a third. By the help of the silver light in the east he was able to keep them in sight. Leaping nullahs, tearing through thick jungle, uttering fierce cries to frighten away the wild creatures that might be crouching in cover, he followed in their track. If he had stopped to think, as he has told me, he could not have done it. Nor would it ever have occurred to him to follow the birds, had it not been for that impression, inexplicable even to this day to himself, that unseen presences were near him. But once started he staggered on. Insects stung him, thorns cut into his flesh, his torch was extinguished, his lamp burned dim. Through all his excitement he realised that if he was left in darkness he was lost beyond hope of redemption. His life-foes would have him as their prey. No one would ever hear of Bâl Narîn again. Once he fell, but he sprang to his feet again and flourished his lamp, and a tiger, disturbed in his lair, rushed by with angry growling that would have chilled the blood of a man of ordinary courage. But still he held on. The vulture sailed on, swooped down, rose into the air with a harsh cry--was it of disappointment?--swooped down again, and was lost in the jungle. But Bâl Narîn was triumphant, for he had marked the very spot of his disappearance. The second bird and the third sailed up. They helped him to mark the spot. He could not mistake it now, for a tall cotton-tree, whose candelabra-like branches stood out boldly from the silver grey of the eastern sky, was in its immediate neighbourhood. There were few of these trees in the Terai, and they indicated places where the soil was comparatively wholesome. So far as he could judge he was not now very far from the tree which made his landing mark, but there was still a wide nullah to be crossed. Torn and exhausted as he was he experienced some difficulty in getting to the other side, and he considered himself happy in meeting no tiger. He had scarcely force left to grapple with one.