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It left the outlines, it obliterated nothing, but it
stripped off the superficial reality of things. The moon was full
and high overhead, and the light had not so much gone as changed
from definition and the blazing glitter and reflections of solidity
to a translucent and unsubstantial clearness. The jungle that
bordered the little encampment north, south, and west seemed to have
crept a little nearer, enriched itself with blackness, taken to
itself voices.
(Surely it had been silent during the day.)
A warm, faintly-scented breeze just stirred the dead grass and the
leaves. In the day the air had been still.
Immediately after the sunset there had been a great crying of
peacocks in the distance, but that was over now; the crickets,
however, were still noisy, and a persistent sound had become
predominant, an industrious unmistakable sound, a sound that took
his mind back to England, in midsummer. It was like a watchman's
rattle--a nightjar!
So there were nightjars here in India, too! One might have expected
something less familiar.


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