Few can live in the Black Jungle of the Sundarbans, the islands formed by the delta of the Ganges river in India, a desolate, silent place teeming with wild dangerous beasts. Yet it is among its dark forests and bamboo groves here that the renowned snake and tiger hunter Tremal-Naik makes his home. For years he has lived there in peace until one night in the deep of the jungle a strange apparition stands before him - a beautiful young woman that vanishes in an instant. Within days, strange music is heard in the jungle, then one of his men is found dead without a mark upon his body. Determined to find some answers, the hunter sets off with his faithful servant Kammamuri, but as they head deeper into the jungles of the Sundarbans, they soon find their own lives at risk: a deadly new foe has been watching their every move, a foe that threatens all of
British India. Tremal-Naik encounters the young woman, whose name is Ada, again in a temple in the jungle, and he's caught by fever, as his never-trembling heart is caught by love for her, right at the time when she seems to be facing her doom. Ada is there captured by
thugs, worshipers of the goddess Kali. ==Characters==