ing him faint and gasping. It seemed to him that it was pounding him into a jelly.
How long this ordeal lasted Pandak Âris never knew. For an eternity, it seemed to him, every energy of his mind and body was concentrated in the effort to prevent his enemy from securing a hold on him, and he was dimly aware that he was partially protected, and that his assailant was greatly hampered by the buttress roots by which his body was flanked. It was a desperate struggle, and Pandak Âris felt as though it would never end, and the situation was unchanged when day began slowly to break.
Dawn comes rapidly in Malaya up to a certain point, though the sun takes time to arise from under its bedclothes of white mist. One moment all is dark as the bottomless pit; another, and a new sense is given to the watcher—the sense of form. A minute or two more, and the ability to distinguish colour comes to one with a shock of surprise—a dim green manifests itself in the grass, the yellow of a pebble, the brown of a faded leaf, the grayness of a tree trunk, each is revealed as a new and unexpected quality in a familiar object. So it was with Pandak Âris. All in a moment he began to see; and what he saw did not help to reassure him. He looked up at a vast and overwhelming bulk standing over him—a thing of heavy, heaving shoulders and ferocious, lowered head, still seen only in outline—and knew his assailant for a sĕlâdang, the wild buffalo of eastern Asia, which is the largest of all the beasts, save only
