, by mud-walled
villages, he journeyed day and night. The train crossed countless wide
river-beds in which the streams had shrunk to mean rivulets; but when it
clattered over the Ganges at Allahabad the sacred flood rolled a broad
and sluggish current under the bridge on its way to the far-distant Bay
of Bengal.

On the fourth night Wargrave slept on a bench in the waiting-room of a
small junction, Niralda, from which a narrow-gauge railway branched off
to the north from the main line through Eastern Bengal. At an early hour
next morning he took his seat in the one first-class carriage of the toy
train, which journeyed through typical Bengal scenery by mud-banked
rice-fields, groves of tall, feathery bamboos and hamlets of pretty
palm-thatched huts, their roofs hidden by the broad green leaves of
sprawling creepers. Soon across the sky to the north a dark, blurred
line rose, stretching out of sight east and west. It grew clearer as the
train sped on, more distinct. It was the great northern rampart of
India, the Himalayas. Then, seeming to float in air high above the
highest of the dark mountain peaks and utterly detached from them, the
white crests of the Eternal Snows shone fairy-like against the blue sky.

As Wargrave gazed enraptured, suddenly hills and plain were shut out
from his sight as the train plunged from the dazzling sunlight into the
deep shadows of a tropical forest. And the subaltern recognised with a
thrill of delight that he was entering the wonderful Terai Jungle, the
marvelous belt of woodland that stretches for hundreds of miles along
the foot of the Himalayas through Assam and Bengal to the far Siwalik
range, clothing their lower slopes or scaling their steep sides into
Nepal and Bhutan. Deep in its recesses the rhinoceros, bison and buffalo
hide, herds of wild elephants roam, tigers prey on the countless deer,
and the great mountain bears descend to prowl in it for food. Frank had
learned on the way that Ranga Duar was practically situated in it; and
the knowledge almost consoled him for his exile in the promise of sport
that kings might envy.

At a small wayside station in a clearing in the forest his railway
journey ended. Beside the one small stone building two elephants were
standing, incessantly swinging their trunks, flapping their ears and
shifting their weight restlessly from leg to leg. Frank, on getting out
of his carriage, learned with pleasure from their salaaming _mahouts_
(drivers