Pointing to a machan in a pipal tree that overhung the pool, Rada said: "That is the rajah's, but no one makes a kill here—it is but for the pleasure of the eye. Knowing this, the dwellers of the jungle come to drink of the waters that are sweet with salt, and depart in peace; though it is said that at times a spirit, in the shape of an evil leopard, creeps from yonder cave and makes the kill of a deer or a sambar. In the cave yonder, Buddha, who was once of our faith, lamented on the sins of the world till his tears made the stream sweet with salt, and so it has remained. The cave is an abode of evil spirits; lights have been seen, and deep noises heard such as the hill gods make."
"Who comes to the pool, Rada—for there is the machan?"
Rada lifted his small, black, twitching eyes to the placid, opaque ones of Swinton. "The sahib knows what talk over a hookah is, each one trying to show great knowledge; but it is whispered at such times that the Missie Baba, who fears neither horse nor spirit, comes here at night."
"For what purpose—to meet some one?"
"Of that Rada knows nothing; that the evil gossips say it is the rajah is perhaps a lie."
Swinton turned Shabaz up the path, and at the top rode a little tour of inspection, following a road that circled above the winding stream. Overlooking the Jadoo cave and the path that wound down the hillside was a heavy wall built of stone that had been taken from the buried city.
"Most delightful place to plant a machine gun, or even a 'three-inch,'" the captain muttered.
A reverberating tiger roar shook the earth as Swinton rounded the Place of Roses on his way back, and past its wall he came suddenly upon Lord Victor in active controversy with a lop-eared native horse he was more or less astride of. Evidently the sudden tiger call had frightened the horse, for he was whirling, with his long ewe neck stretched high in air, his lop ears almost brushing the clinging rider's face. Lord Victor had lost his stirrups; he was practically over the pommel of the saddle, sitting the razor-bladed wither. A country bred's neck is like a piece of rubber hose, and Anglo-Indians have learned to sit tight and let him have his head; but Lord Victor climbed up the reins, pulling the brute's head into his lap, and when to save himself he threw an arm around the lean neck, down went the head and he was sent flying, to sprawl on his back, where he lay eyeing the smiling captain.
Having unseated his rider, the country bred, forgetting all about the tiger, stood looking with complacent vacuity at the groom, who now held him by the rein.
"Thought you weren't riding this morning," Swinton remarked, as they went down the hill.