gged his shoulders, and left them
and went on his way. For a long time he could hear them, then just as he
was on the verge of forgetting them altogether, some dispute arose among
them, and there began a vast uproar, squeals, protests, comments, one
voice ridiculously replete and authoritative, ridiculously suggestive
of a drunken judge with his mouth full, and a shrill voice of grievance
high above the others....

The uproar of the bears died away at last, almost abruptly, and left the
jungle to the incessant night-jars....

For what end was this life of the jungle?

All Benham's senses were alert to the sounds and appearances about him,
and at the same time his mind was busy with the perplexities of that
riddle. Was the jungle just an aimless pool of life that man must drain
and clear away? Or is it to have a use in the greater life of our race
that now begins? Will man value the jungle as he values the precipice,
for the sake of his manhood? Will he preserve it?

Man must keep hard, man must also keep fierce. Will the jungle keep him
fierce?

For life, thought Benham, there must be insecurity....

He had missed the track....

He was now in a second ravine. He was going downward, walking on silvery
sand amidst great boulders, and now there was a new sound in the
air--. It was the croaking of frogs. Ahead was a solitary gleam. He was
approaching a jungle pool....

Suddenly the stillness was alive, in a panic uproar. "HONK!" cried a
great voice, and "HONK!" There was a clatter of hoofs, a wild rush--a
rush as it seemed towards him. Was he being charged? He backed against a
rock. A great pale shape leaped by him, an antlered shape. It was a herd
of big deer bolting suddenly out of the stillness. He heard the swish
and smash of their retreat grow distant, disperse. He remained standing
with his back to the rock.

Slowly the strophe and antistrophe of frogs and goat-suckers resumed
possession of his consciousness. But now some primitive instinct
perhaps or some subconscious intimation of danger made him meticulously
noiseless.

He went on down a winding sound-deadening path of sand towards the
drinking-place. He came to a wide white place that was almost level, and
beyond it under clustering pale-stemmed trees shone the mirror surface
of some ancient tank, and, sharp and black, a dog-like beast sat on its
tail in the midst of this space, started convulsively and went slinking
into the undergrowth. Benham pause