28 RIFLE AND ROMANCE 



tightly back, her nose puckered up, a deep, brassy 

 "Wroof!" rent the still night air; she plunged forward, 

 her huge paw went out correctively, tentatively, thought- 

 fully more in sorrow than in anger and the erring cub 

 rolled over on to his back and into oblivion. 



The moon had set. 



Above the dark outline of distant hills a faint and 

 evanescent sheen lingered in the western sky, and marked 

 where her declining disc had lately been slowly cut through 

 by the blackly rising heads of jungle trees ; and a com- 

 plete hush had descended together with that short period 

 of darkness which, a few nights before the time of the full 

 moon, divides the reigns of the nocturnal and diurnal 

 luminaries. 



Even the insects had ceased to shrill, and the gentle 

 breathing of the sleeping forest become almost inaudible 

 at this deathly hour 'twixt moonset and dawn. The pool 

 of the KMri ravine, where, so short a while before, such 

 scenes of savagery had been enacted, lay as dark as its 

 enfolding trees. Not even a frog croaked. 



It is at this hour, the dark before the dawn, that even 

 the most persevering of hunters, watching from some 

 nocturnal post, finds it almost impossible to fight longer 

 against an insidious somnolence. The head begins to fall 

 forward ; the cigar, lit in desperation of the struggle against 

 sleep, slips from slackening fingers ; the cloak is drawn 

 instinctively closer against the slight lowering of the 

 tropical temperature ; and man has all but succumbed to 

 the mesmeric fingers of Nature. 



Slowly the atmosphere chills. A very slight dew is 

 condensing. 



High towards the zenith the faintest suggestion of 

 luminosity seems to grow and spread. It is hardly to be 

 distinguished from the star-dust already shining there; 



