By this time, superstitious terror had taken complete possession of Ashati and Neram, and Bomba himself could feel the hair rising on his head. The swift-falling darkness, the knowledge that danger was all about them, that insane enemies were skulking perhaps behind a tree, leering at them from branches overhead, crouching in ambush behind a concealing bush or shrub, at any moment to reach out a hairy arm--all these things combined to fill them with terror.