CHAPTER X

THROUGH FIRE AND WATER

India in the hot weather--A land of torment--The drought--Forest fires--The cholera huts burned--Fighting the flames--Death of a sepoy--The bond between British officers and their men--The sepoy's funeral--A fortnight's vigil--Saving the Station--The hills ablaze--A sublime spectacle--The devastated forest--Fallen leaves on fire--Our elephants' peril--Saving the zareba--A beat for game in the jungle--Trying to catch a wild elephant--A moonlight ramble--We meet a bear--The burst of the Monsoons--A dull existence--Three hundred inches of rain--The monotony of thunderstorms--A changed world--Leeches--Monster hailstones--Surveyors caught in a storm--A brink in the Rains--The revived jungle--Useless lightning-conductors--The Monsoon again--The loneliness of Buxa 196