The path into which he had struck, as being that which seemed to lead in the direction where he had heard the firing, was comparatively easy. As he went on cautiously, throwing the light of his lamp in front of him, he felt surprised that he met with so few difficulties. For a space several yards in width the tall kutcha-grass was so completely trodden down, and the low trees and bushes, with their rank wealth of undergrowth, were so uniformly levelled to the ground, that he could have imagined an army with artillery and baggage-waggons had passed this way. That such a thing was impossible he knew very well, for he had studied the map of Terai again and again with Bâl Narîn. The maharajah's road, which was the only one used for military purposes, was many miles distant from the point they had reached. But what he did not know was that he was in the very track of the monarch of the jungle. Eight months before, when the plains of the north-west were at peace, and the Terai was unhaunted by the deadly fever that, for three-quarters of the year, makes it uninhabitable to all but the savage Aswalias, Jung Bahadoor, who was at that time one of the keenest sportsmen of his generation, brought down from the high Nepaul valley a gallant company of hunters, mounted on tame elephants of proved skill and sagacity, to chase and capture some of the wild elephants that have their dwelling in the morass and jungle, and it was along this road that the hunters had come. A terrible chase it was to any but men mounted and caparisoned as they were, for the wild herd had made it their drive. Hither they came, from the mud in which they had been wallowing--night after night in awful phalanx serried--to drink from a pool in the morass, and to tear down the tall grasses and trees on their passage, for the succulent young shoots that made their food. Had Tom met the dark army, he was lost. Not even the flaming torch, which was a protection from serpents and tigers, would have saved him. They would have rushed over him--crushed him into a grave, where even the birds of prey would scarcely have found him. Of this danger--the worst that had ever threatened him yet--Tom had no more idea than a child. He trusted for his protection to his torch, his lamp, and his weapons, and all the energies he had to spare from picking out his way were bent on watching for anything that might indicate human neighbourhood. That, at a moment so critical, his mind should have strayed even for an instant from the scenes in which he found himself, seems so strange as to be almost incredible. He was alone; he was surrounded with unknown perils; an object dearer far to him than the preservation of his own life was--or seemed to be--within his grasp; everything might depend upon the way in which he met the next few moments; and yet--I have it on an authority which there is no disputing--at this point his mind began to wander.