| caption: |
Chapter Three. An Orgy in Stone |
| caption: |
description of ruined gate at Dimapur |
| text: |
(25) Swarms of shrieking parrots flew off low boughs as Mills and I approached the clearing. Their jerking flight aimed at the highest branches of a tall tree, jutting out, dry and fantastic, from the entanglement of exuberant creepers. Thousands of clamouring arms clawed the gnarled trunk in deadly embrace and, climbing higher and higher, had gradually suffocated the giant tree. And now the tree was dead; the next storm would probably fell it, and with it those living fetters would themselves be cast upon the ground to lie in tangled heaps, thickening the thicket and making the jungle even more impenetrable. |
