Bootea--he could have sworn her head had drooped, and that she
shivered. The girl must have sensed his thoughts, for she turned her
eyes up to his, but they held nothing of fear.

Beyond the bridge they passed across a lower level, jungle clad with
delicate bamboos and dhak, and sweet-scented shrubs, and clusters of
gorgeous oleanders. The way was thronged with white-clothed figures
that seemed like wraiths, ghosts drifting back to the cavern of the
Destroyer.

Then they commenced the ascent following the bed of a stream that had
cut a chasm through black trap-rock, leaving jagged cliffs. And the
persistent jungle, ever encroaching on space, had out-posts of champac
and wild mango, their giant roots, like the arms of an octopus, holding
anchorage in clefts of the rock. And from the limbs above floated down
the scolding voices of _lungoor_, the black-faced grey-whiskered
monkeys, who rebuked the intrusion of the earth-dwellers below. Where
the path lay over rocks it was worn smooth and slippery by naked feet,
the feet of pilgrims for a thousand years. On the right the mouth of a
deep cave had been walled up by masonry. Within, so the legend ran,
the High Priest of Mandhatta, centuries before, had imprisoned the
goddess Kali to stop a pestilence, making vow to offer to Bhairava, her
son, a yearly human sacrifice. Higher up, approaching the plateau
where were the ruins of a thousand gorgeous shrines, both sides of the
pathway were lined by mendicants who sat cross-legged, in front of them
a little mat for the receipt of alms--cowries, pice, silver; the
mendicants muttering incessantly "_Jae, Jae, Omkar_!" (Victory to
Omkar).

In front of the temple within which sat the god, was a conical black