f
love, of hatred, of hope, of despair--and in the night-time, when the
dominance of sense-activity shifts from eye to ear, from retina to
nostril, it cries aloud its confidences to all the world. But the
human mind is not equal to a true understanding of these; for in a
tropical jungle the birds and the frogs, the beasts and the insects
are sending out their messages so swiftly one upon the other, that the
senses fail of their mission and only chaos and a great confusion are
carried to the brain. The whirring of invisible wings and the movement
of the wind in the low branches become one and the same: it is an
epic, told in some strange tongue, an epic filled to overflowing with
tragedy, with poetry and mystery. The cloth of this drama is woven
from many-colored threads, for Nature is lavish with her pigment,
reckless with life and death. She is generous because there is no need
for her to be miserly. And in the darkness, I have heard the working
of her will, translating as best I could.

In the darkness, I have at times heard the tramping of many feet; in
a land traversed only by Indian trails I have listened to an
overloaded freight train toiling up a steep grade; I have heard the
noise of distant battle and the cries of the victor and the
vanquished. Hard by, among the trees, I have heard a woman seized,
have heard her crying, pleading for mercy, have heard her choking and
sobbing till the end came in a terrible, gasping sigh; and then, in
the sudden silence, there was a movement and thrashing about in the
topmost branches, and the flutter and whirr of great wings moving
swiftly away from me into the heart of the jungle--the only clue to
the author of this vocal tragedy. Once, a Pan of the woods tuned up
his pipes--striking a false note now and then, as if it were his whim
to appear no more than the veriest amateur; then suddenly, with the
full liquid sweetness of his reeds, bursting into a strain so
wonderful, so silvery clear, that I lay with mouth open to still the
beating of blood in my ears, hardly breathing, that I might catch
every vibration of his song. When the last note died away, there was
utter stillness about me for an instant--nothing stirred, nothing
moved; the wind seemed to have forsaken the leaves. From a great
distance, as if he were going deeper into the woods, I heard him once
more tuning up his pipes; but he did not play again.

Beside me, I heard the low voice of one of my natives murmuring,