"A safe journey and return, Sahib!" he called.
The Sahib's answer came back cheerily through the stillness. He looked back for an instant at the patch of firelight and the sharply cut silhouettes of moving figures, and then strode on, keeping well to the middle of the dusty roadway, his footsteps ringing out above the soft accompaniment of Ayeshi's patter and the fussy tap-tap of Wickie's unwieldy paws. He whistled cheerfully. So long as the sleeping, odoriferous mud-huts of the village bound them in on either hand, he clung tenaciously to his disjointed scrap of melody, but, as they came out at last into the open country, he broke off, sighing, and stood still, his arms outstretched, breathing in the freedom and untainted air with a thirsty, passionate gratitude.
There was no moon. The luminous haze which poured out over the limitless space before them was a mysterious thing, born of itself without source, without body. Its pallid, greenish clarity stretched in a ghostly sea between the earth and the black, beacon-studded sky, distorting and magnifying, as still water distorts and magnifies the rocks and tangled seaweed at its bed. It lapped soundlessly against the cliff of rising jungle land to the right, and beneath its quiet surface the shadow of the village temple floated like a sunken island, its slender sikhara alone rising up into the darkness, a finger of warning and admonition. It was very still. The voice of the invisible, swift-flowing river had indeed grown louder, but it was a sound outside this world of shadows and phantoms. It beat against the protecting wall of dreams, unheeded yet ominous and threatening in its implacable reality.
The two men crossed the path which encircled the village and made their way over the uneven ground towards the temple. As they drew nearer, the light seemed to recede, leaving the great roofless manderpam a shapeless ruin, whilst the sikhara faded into the black background of the jungle. The Dakktar Sahib whistled softly; a horse whinnied in answer, and the amazing Wickie bounded forward as though recognizing an old acquaintance. The Sahib laughed under his breath.
"We know each other, Wickie, Arabella and I," he said. "A wonderful animal that, Ayeshi."
"Truly, a noble creature, Sahib," Ayeshi answered very gravely.
A minute later they reached the carved gateway of the temple where two horses had been casually tethered. They stood deep in shadow, but the strange, unreal light which covered the plain filled the manderpam with its broken avenue of pillars, and threw into sharp relief the carved gateway and the figure seated cross-legged and motionless beneath the arch. Both men seemed to have expected the apparition. Ayeshi knelt down before it and placed a bowl of milk, which he had been carefully carrying, within reach of the long, lifeless-looking arms.
"For the God thou servest, O Holy One," he said, and for a moment knelt there with his forehead pressed to the ground.
The old mendicant seemed neither to have heard nor seen. He was almost naked. The bones started out of the shrivelled flesh, and the long, matted grey hair hung about his shoulders and mingled with the dishevelled beard, so that he seemed scarcely human, scarcely living. Only for an instant his eyes, half hidden beneath the wild disorder, flashed over the kneeling figure, and then closed, shutting the last vestige of life behind blank lids.
The Dakktar Sahib bent down and placed a coin in the upturned palms.