terrible hunger wail of a tiger. That instant its tawny face
scarred with black emerged from behind green leaves. He saw I was
across the river. The tiger's body is marked with the same
stripes and curves as he makes in the grass when he walks, and
people in the jungle can always tell by the wave of the grass
which animal has passed that way.

Throughout the country-side, wherever the echo of the wail was
heard, a tension fell upon everything. Even the saplings were
tense, and you could almost hear the cracking of the muscles of
the animals holding themselves together and watching which way
the tiger would pass. It was as if the horn of the chase had
sounded and blown; each one had to take to cover.

Night came on apace. I wanted to tie Kari to a big tree, but he
refused to be tied up that night. He paced up and down the shore
without making the slightest noise. Then he would suddenly stand
still and stop the waving of his ears in order to listen very
intently to shadows of songs that might be passing. I stayed on
his back, intent on knowing what he was going to do. Soon, very
soon, the river became silver-yellow and over the jungle a
quickening silence throbbed from leaf to leaf.

Then swiftly the terrible face of the moon was upon us. Kari
snorted and stepped backwards. I, too, was surprised because this
was another moon, very rarely seen by men. It was the moon
bringing the call of the summer to the jungle. It was the call
for hunt and challenge, when elephants kill elephants to win
their mates. And under the moon lay a great sinister figure like
the terrible face of a dragon.

The July cloud was hovering in the distance, and between the
cloud-banks and the moon I saw strange things, as if throngs of
white animals were going from sky to sky--I don't know why--no
one ever knows. These are the spirits of the jungle, the dead
ancestors of the animals now living.

Without warning, Kari now plunged into the river. I spoke to him,
scratched his neck with the _ankus_, but he would not stop. He
forded the river, at times almost drowning, and charged madly up
the other shore, where we were lost in the darkness of leaves and
vines. No moonlight fell on us, not even the knowledge that the
moon was up could be vouched for in this thick black place.

CHAPTER VI

KARI'S STORY

I cannot tell how many hours passed. I think I fell asleep, but
perhaps I saw this waking--I cannot tell. Suddenly Kari's face
change