FOREST LODGE THE SECOND.
The fact was that its position invited attack. It stood near a path, much frequented by elephants, leading to a salt lick in the hills a few hundred yards away. This was in a curious amphitheatre in the foothills where landslips had left exposed precipitous slopes of a curious white earth impregnated with some chemical salts, probably soda or natron, of which wild animals are extremely fond. Bison, elephants, and deer of all sorts used to come here at night to eat this earth; and tigers prowled around it in search of prey. Native shikarees (hunters) erected machâns or platforms over it to pot the deer at their ease. This amphitheatre was almost a complete circle, save for one narrow chasm which must have been cut by the force of water. It was a winding gully, in places scarcely broad enough to allow the passage of an elephant with a pad on its back. I wondered what happened when two tuskers met in the narrow path. Its perpendicular sides were formed of the same white clay; but at their bases were seams of coal, black and shining where freshly exposed. When I saw them I thought that I had made a valuable discovery of mineral wealth. But when I broke off lumps of the coal and placed them on my camp fire I found that they would not burn; and I learned that there is coal in these hills which is a thousand years too young and, so, valueless. Thus faded my dream of the boundless wealth the jungle was to give me.
Forest Lodge was a constant source of interest and wonderment to all the monkeys in the neighbourhood. They used to gather in the tree-tops around and hold conferences to discuss it. Perched on the branches mothers with small babies clinging to them, sedate old men and frivolous youngsters scratched themselves meditatively and chattered and argued as to what manner of strange ape I was who had thus invaded their realm. When restless young monkeys wearied of the endless discussion and started to frivol, the elder ones seemed to rebuke their levity, and when this failed to have the desired effect would spring with bared teeth on the irreverent youth to chastise them; and the meeting then broke up in disorder.
When my detachment was encamped around Forest Lodge the scene at night, as I looked down from my windows, was truly Rembrandtesque. Their fires glowed in the trees, lighting up the dark faces of the sepoys and revealing with weird effect the huge forms of our transport elephants restlessly swaying at their pickets, ears flapping and trunks swinging as the big beasts incessantly shifted their weight from foot to foot. Around the bivouac was built a zareba of cut thorny bushes; and the guards mounted with ball cartridge in their pouches, not merely because it is the custom of the Service, but to repel any prowling dangerous beasts that might be tempted to visit the camp by night; for within fifty yards of a sentry I had a shot at a bear; and a tiger killed a sambhur not a hundred yards from the zareba. And once I sat at the window of my tree-dwelling listening to a tiger prowling around for a long time, uttering short snorting roars but never approaching near enough to give me a shot at him.
The voices of the men in the camp sounded loud through the silent forest and must have astonished the wild animals making their way to the salt lick close by, for at night all the jungle is awake. The beasts of prey wander from sunset to sunrise in search of a meal; and the deer must be on the alert against them. Only in the hot hours of the day dare they repose in security and lie down to sleep in the shade of the undergrowth. Even then they start at every sound, and the snapping of a twig brings them to their feet; for to the harmless animals life in the jungle is one constant menace. The birds and the monkeys in the trees alone can devote the dark hours to slumber; there is no rest at night for anything that dwells on the ground.
Now gradually the sepoys' voices die away and the flickering fires burn low. The forest is hushed in silence, broken only by the eerie cry of the great owl or the distant crash of a tree knocked down by a wild elephant.