The temple of _Gunesh_ will be full indeed
tonight. But alas! I am an ignorant man. I knew not that the holy one took
form among the _gora-logue_ (white folk)."
"The gods know no country. The truth, Rama, the truth," said Barclay
impressively. "Else thou art lost. Shiva-_ji_, mayhap, is hungry and needs
his meal of flesh."
"Ai! sahib, say not so," wailed the terror-stricken man. "He has feasted
well today. With my own eyes I saw him feed on Man Singh the Rajput."
Natives believe that an elephant, when it seizes in its mouth the limbs
of a man that it has killed and is about to tear in pieces, eats his
flesh. In dread of a like doom, of the terrible vengeance of this
mysterious Being, god, man, or demon, perhaps all three, from whom
death shrank aside, whom neither poison of food nor venom of snake could
harm, who used mad, man-slaying elephants as steeds, Rama unburdened his
soul. He told how the _Dewan's_ confidential man had bade him carry out
the attempts on Dermot's life. He showed them that the Major's
suspicions when he saw the Rajah's soldiery were correct, and that from
Lalpuri came the inspiration of the carrying-off of Noreen. He told them
of a party of these same soldiers that had gone on a secret mission into
the Great Jungle, from which but a few came back after awful sufferings,
and the strange tales whispered in the bazaar as to the fate of their
comrades.
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