He mentally reviewed his journey from the boat to the temple, fighting through the tiger-grass, breaking through the delicate impeding branches of the sundri trees, crushing the sundri breathers under his heavy boots as he tramped behind the guide, having failed to notice, owing to the resemblance that exists between one ordinary native and the next, that the guide and coolie of the jungle were not the guide and coolie of the paddle boat.
He remembered that once he had stopped dead and laid a detaining hand on the guide's shoulder, as through the darkening forest had come a cry, eerie as it wailed through the shadows, to be taken up ahead of them, and echoed and re-echoed until it became faint in the distance and died away altogether.
"What's that?"
The native had not hesitated.
"The cry, O Sahib, Protector of the poor, of the jungle owl as it seeks its food!"
Cuxson, unobservant for once, and anxious to get to the end of the trail again failed to notice that it was still far too light for any member of the owl family to be abroad.
Also, when he sat down on a fallen tree trunk to readjust his boot strap, he had mistaken for the booming of a huge jungle insect something which whizzed through the space where his head had been a second before.
It is true he had questioned the guide as to the route they were taking, pointing out that it was not the one traversed in the shikar.
To which the guide had replied that doubtless the shikari had taken the sahibs many miles out of their way to ensure a big toll to the sahibs' guns, and those of the mem-sahibs.
Jan Cuxson had accepted every explanation.