Page:Rowland--The Mountain of Fears.djvu/282

  moon, high in the zenith, its pale light quenching that of the dying embers of the fire and waning itself before the dawn. The things it looked down upon—the heaving figures of the devotees—and all about the pure, sweet peace of the tropic night!

" 'Tom - tom - tom - tom- tom - tom - tom - tom,' went the drum, and then I awoke with a shiver and began to dress. I stepped to the window for added light, and other noises than those of the drum welled up from the valley beneath. Air was stirring, and it blew through my jalousies and filled the room with the smell of the stephanotis.

" 'Quietly as a cat I slipped down the stairs and out into the night. Not a sound, not a flicker of light came from any of the little houses in the village. I followed the road down the mountain for a way, and then, as I am a tracker and the moon was well up, I found a path which others had taken since the dew. It skirted the hill, then dipped abruptly into the jungle. [ 266 ]