In accordance with their customary mode of military engineering, the face of the stockade presented a curved line of stout timbers driven into the earth at an angle, and almost touching one another.
Behind, the natural level had been considerably raised, with a view to putting it above the influence of any abnormal flood.
The inner circumference was lined with wooden and bamboo houses, around which lay a pile of half cooked food and débris, just as the fugitives had left them.
A gang of men were, however, soon at work clearing a place and preparing suitable quarters for a permanent garrison.
When I had inspected all this to my own satisfaction, I made my way to the bamboo bridge which spanned the river a short distance below.
In spite of the alarming manner in which it creaked and swayed, it was very strong, though, by the very nature of the material of which it was constructed, adapted only to very light traffic. In the middle of the stream the water was deep, but so clear that one could distinguish every pebble on its gravelly bed. The sight of numbers of large fish darting hither and thither at once aroused my Waltonian proclivities, and I recollect that some of us tried our hands at the art with considerable success, though I have unfortunately no record of the size or species of the fish.
Most of my notes, together with everything else, perished a few years later in that wretched and disastrous Mutiny; could I but have foreseen it, I should have elected to remain in this El Dorado, and turned Buddhist!
An opening at the middle of this bridge afforded a glorious place for a dive, and, as far as we could ascertain, there were no alligators about, the water was too clear for these loathsome amphibians, which—being of the dirt, dirty!—delight in the solitude of a muddy river bedded with slime and ooze.
From this bridge, which was a favourite rendezvous of an evening, the view above was exceedingly grand, especially as the rays of the setting sun streamed along the valley in a gorgeous blaze, the like of which—and that only on a very small scale—I have only seen at Govilon on the Usk.
The dangers attending any expedition into the jungle afoot having been impressed upon the party in general and myself in particular, we determined to rove in search of that delicate chanticleer once more, but perched this journey on the backs of elephants. We made up the same party as before, each with an elephant; but this was a different affair, inasmuch as a quartet of these animals, advancing in line with stolid indifference to any obstacle smaller than a large tree, routed out the game wholesale.