He wrapped his handkerchief round the pot before handing it to her.

“I suppose you haven’t a dairy in your wonderful jungle?” she asked, laughing.

“No; I’m sorry to say that you must put up with condensed milk,” he replied, producing a tin from a pocket of the pad and opening it with his knife.

“What a pity!  That spoils the illusion,” declared the girl.  “I ought to refuse it; but I’ll pass it for this occasion, as I don’t like my tea unsugared and milkless.  No, I refuse to have a spoon.”  For he took out a couple and some aluminium plates from the inexhaustible pad.  “I’ll stir my tea with a splinter of bamboo and eat my chupatis off leaves.  It is more in keeping with the situation.”

Like a couple of light-hearted children they sat side by side on the pad, drank their tea from the rude bamboo cups and devoured the hot chupatis with enjoyment; while, invisible in the dense undergrowth, Badshah twenty yards away betrayed his presence by tearing down creepers and breaking off branches.  In due time Dermot took from the hot ashes a hardened clay ball, broke it open and served up the jungle fowl, from which the feathers had been stripped off by the process of cooking.  Noreen expressed herself disappointed when her companion produced knives and forks from the magic pockets of the pad.

“We ought to be consistent and use our fingers,” she said.

When they had finished their meal, which the girl declared was the most enjoyable one that she had ever had, Dermot made her rest again on the pad while he cleaned and replaced his plates, cutlery, and cooking vessels.  Then, leaning his back against a tree, he filled and lit his pipe, while Noreen watched him stealthily and admiringly.  In the perfect peace and silence of the forest encompassing them she felt reluctant to leave the enchanted spot.

But suddenly the charm was rudely dispelled.  A shot rang out close by, and Dermot’s hat was knocked from his head as a bullet passed through it and pierced the bark of the tree half an inch above his hair.  As though the shot were a signal, fire was opened on the glade from every side, and for a moment the air seemed full of whistling bullets.  The soldier sprang to Noreen, picked her up like a child in his arms, and ran with her to an enormously thick simal tree, behind which he placed her.  Then he gathered up the pad and piled it on her exposed side as some slight protection.  At least it hid her from sight.

As he did so the firing redoubled in intensity and bullets whistled and droned through the glade.  One grazed his cheek, searing the flesh as with a red-hot iron.  Another wounded him slightly in the neck, while a third cut the skin of his thigh.  He seemed to bear a charmed life; and the girl watching him felt her heart stop, as the blood showed on his face and neck.  The flying lead sent leaves fluttering to the ground, cut off twigs, and struck the tree-trunks with a thud.  Flinging himself at full length on the ground Dermot reached his rifle, then crawled to shelter behind another tree.