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CHAPTER I

Angkor, the capital of the mighty Khmer Empire, the hush of afternoon had fallen. All nature, spent by the long hours of heat, lay prostrate, awaiting breathlessly the first touch of coolness that would come with the setting of the sun. Only man—the tireless fashioner of beautiful, useless things—stared through the glare under burdened eyelids and, at the ruthless behest of man, still toiled and sweated in the dust.

Beneath the drenching flood of sunlight pouring down out of the colourless sky, Angkor Wat stood forth in all its majesty, dominating the featureless landscape.

From the margin of the Great Lake an immense expanse of alluvial flat spread inshore as far as the eye could carry. The turbid waters and the jungle-smothered land merged