"I never knew a more decent tiger--" Cadman went on. "Besides, he's a
friend of yours, and not too expensive--"

"You bought him to--"

"I bought him for you, son--a tribute to the nerviest white man I ever
stepped with--"

That evening a great whine went up from the bearers. It appears that
while some were cutting wood, others preparing supper and others
gathering dry grass for beds, the younger white man, who had made magic
with the tiger in the pit, suddenly failed in his powers. The natives
were sure it was not their fault that the cover had not been securely
fastened. The bearers repeated they were all at work and could find no
fault with themselves. They were used to dealing with white men who
did not permit bungling. Their wailing was very loud. . . . To lose
such a tiger was worth more than many natives, some white men would
say. . . . But Cadman Sahib was rich. He fumed but little; being of
all white men most miraculously compassionate. . . . Also it was true
the beast, though full grown, was not a man-eater. . . .

"And to-morrow we shall go on alone--it is much pleasanter," said Skag,
after all was still and they lay down together.

CHAPTER II

_Son of Power_

His Indian name was given to Skag in the great Grass Jungle; but he did
not know the meaning of the words when they first fell upon his ear.
There India herself first opened for him the magic gates that seal her
mystery. But he did not know it was her glamour that made him utterly
forget outside things, in the unbelievable loveliness of Grass Jungle
days; did not know it was just as much her spell that made him forget his
own birthright, in the paralysis of perfect fear.

A part of her mystery is this forgetting--while she reveals canvas after
canvas of life--uncovers layer beneath layer of her deeper marvels. Skag
was involved with his animals--and interests peculiarly personal--till it
all came to seem like a dream. Yet underneath his surface consciousness
it was working in him, as the glamour of India always does, to colour his
entire future--as the magic of India always will.

After their night in the tiger pit-trap, Cadman and Skag had wandered
southeast-ward--still searching for the Monkey Forest and the Coldwater
Ruins--and had become lost to the world and the ways of civilisation in
the mazes of the Mahadeo mountains. They had found a dozen jungles full
of monkeys, but none of them looked to Cadman like his dream.