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THE WRECK

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The last glimmer of the wintry twilight soon faded from the sky. The sandy margin of the river gleamed faintly in the darkness, as though some painter had smudged out the figures on his brightly-hued landscape and left only the colourless canvas. The moonless sky studded with unwinking stars breathed gently down on the deserted river-bank.

Kamala could descry nothing before her but a seem- ingly endless, unpeopled void, but she knew that she must go forward and she never paused to consider what lay at the end of her march. She decided, how- ever, to follow the bank of the river. This would relieve her of the necessity of asking her way and if danger threatened she could at once find asylum in the bosom of Mother Ganges.

There was not a particle of vapour in the air, and the darkness enveloped Kamala but did not blind her. As the night wore on jackals emerged from the shelter of the wheat-fields and howled discordantly. Kamala had been walking for some hours when the flats gave place to a high bank and the sand to cultivable soil. A village barred the way but as she approached it with beating heart it became apparent that all the in- habitants were sound asleep. Strength began to fail her as she skirted timidly round the village, and when at last she reached the top of an apparently sheer de- clivity she sank down at the foot of a banyan tree and slept the sleep of utter exhaustion.

When she awoke towards dawn, the waning moon had risen and cast some light on the darkness. Be- side her stood an elderly woman who was plying her with questions in her own tongue. "Who are you, there? W hat are yon doing, sleeping under a tree on a cold night like this?"

Kamala started up in alarm. Looking round she espied near at hand a landing-place at which two barges were moored. The old lady was on a journey and

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