ed peepul over-shadowing a
Hindoo shrine, from whose dome floated a tattered red flag. The holy
man whose summer resting-place it was had long since abandoned it, and
the weather had broken the red-daubed image of his God. The two men
stumbled, heavy-limbed and heavy-eyed, over the ashes of a brick-set
cooking-place, and dropped down under the shelter of the branches,
while the rain and river roared together.

The stumps of the indigo crackled, and there was a smell of cattle, as
a huge and dripping Brahminee Bull shouldered his way under the tree.
The flashes revealed the trident mark of Shiva on his flank, the
insolence of head and hump, the luminous stag-like eyes, the brow
crowned with a wreath of sodden marigold blooms and the silky dewlap
that night swept the ground. There was a noise behind him of other
beasts coming up from the flood-line through the thicket, a sound of
heavy feet and deep breathing.

"Here be more beside ourselves," said Findlayson, his head against the
tree-pole, looking through half-shut eyes, wholly at ease.

"Truly," said Peroo thickly, "and no small ones."

"What are they, then? I do not see clearly."

"The Gods. Who else? Look!"

"Ah, true! The Gods surely--the Gods." Findlayson smiled as his head
fell forward on his chest. Peroo was eminently right. After the Flood,
who should be alive in the land except the Gods that made it--the Gods
to whom his village prayed nightly--the Gods who were in all men's
mouths and about all men's ways? He could not raise his head or stir a
finger for the trance that held him, and Peroo was smiling vacantly at
the lightning.

The Bull paused by the shrine, his head lowered to the damp earth. A
green Parrot in the branches preened his wet wings and screamed
against the thunder as the circle under the tree filled with the
shifting shadows of beasts. There was a Black-buck at the Bull's
heels--such a buck as Findlayson in his far-away life upon earth might
have seen in dreams--a buck with a royal head, ebon back, silver
belly, and gleaming straight horns. Beside him, her head bowed to the
ground, the green eyes burning under the heavy brows, with restless
tail switching the dead grass, paced a Tigress, full-bellied and
deep-jowled.

The Bull crouched beside the shrine and there leaped from the darkness
a monstrous gray Ape, who seated himself man-wise in the place of the
fallen image, and the rain spilled like jewels from the hair of his
neck and sh