Perhaps I was not capable of thinking quite coherently on what had just happened until I was once more fairly outside of the forest shadows--out in that clear open daylight, where things seem what they are, and imagination, like a juggler detected and laughed at, hastily takes itself out of the way.

As I walked homewards I paused midway on the barren ridge to gaze back on the scene I had left, and then the recent adventure began to take a semi-ludicrous aspect in my mind.

All that circumstance of preparation, that mysterious prelude to something unheard of, unimaginable, surpassing all fables ancient and modern, and all tragedies--to end at last in a concert of howling monkeys! Certainly the concert was very grand--indeed, one of the most astounding in nature---but still--I sat down on a stone and laughed freely.
The sun was sinking behind the forest, its broad red disk still showing through the topmost leaves, and the higher part of the foliage was of a luminous green, like green flame, throwing off flakes of quivering, fiery light, but lower down the trees were in profound shadow.
I felt very light-hearted while I gazed on this scene, for how pleasant it was just now to think of the strange experience I had passed through--to think that I had come safely out of it, that no human eye had witnessed my weakness, and that the mystery existed still to fascinate me! For, ludicrous as the denouement now looked, the cause of all, the voice itself, was a thing to marvel at more than ever.

That it proceeded from an intelligent being I was firmly convinced; and although too materialistic in my way of thinking to admit for a moment that it was a supernatural being, I still felt that there was something more than I had at first imagined in Kua-ko's speech about a daughter of the Didi.

That the Indians knew a great deal about the mysterious voice, and had held it in great fear, seemed evident.