But life was not pleasant in Buxa during those days. The atmosphere was filled with smoke which veiled the sun. The heat was intense. So when the danger had passed our Station, I took the detachment down into the burned-out forest for a week's training in camp. The jungle was a sad sight for a sportsman's eyes. The big trees stood scorched, their trunks blackened and the branches charred where the masses of orchids that clothed them had burned. Some of the hollow stems were still on fire inside and sent out smoke among the tree-tops as from a steamer's funnel. Dead trees, long supported by creepers, now lay smouldering on the ground. The undergrowth which sheltered the game was gone. It was strange to be able to see for a hundred yards or more between the tree-trunks, where formerly ten paces was the limit of vision. The earth was covered ankle-deep in ashes, which rose up in suffocating clouds at every breath of hot wind. And above them was strewn a thick layer of dead leaves; for the trees shed them in the hot weather. And these I soon found constituted a fresh danger.
To my surprise I discovered that the little corner in the foot-hills around Forest Lodge had been spared by the fire and my bamboo hut, twenty-two feet up in the air among the branches, was intact. So I halted the men and established the bivouac here. We had marched on ahead of the baggage, which was loaded on the elephants. While these were following us from Santrabari the masses of dry leaves underfoot caught fire from some smouldering log; and a long line of flames swept down on the terrified animals. Fortunately they were near a broad, dry river-bed; and the scared mahouts drove them into it for safety. A mile away the crackling of the burning leaves aroused us to our new danger. Breaking off branches, officers and men set to work to sweep the leaves around the bivouac into heaps and leave the ground bare for a couple of hundred yards on every side. By the morrow the fire had died out, all the leaves having been consumed.
As we manœuvred through the forest every day I was astonished to still find traces of animal life in it. The destruction of the undergrowth and creepers having left the jungle more open, I determined to try a beat through it. On our last afternoon I sent all the men of the detachment a mile away across a broad river-bed with orders to drive towards it in a long line through the trees. On the near bank, which rose sheer to a height of thirty-three feet above the sand, the British and native officers, armed with rifles, took up their position. Lying flat on the ground at the edge of the bank, we listened to the shouts of the men coming nearer and nearer. The branches of the trees across the nullah became violently agitated; and a large troop of monkeys swung through them, leaped to the ground, and rushed over the sand on all fours. Then a barking deer broke out about a hundred and fifty yards away, and I fired at it. I was using a 470 cordite rifle; yet, struck just behind the shoulder by a soft-nosed bullet, the little animal ran a furlong before dropping dead. Nothing else followed it. Soon the men came into view between the trees and halted below us. Draj Khan, who was managing the line of beaters, was berating his comrades vehemently. He told me that they had come across a large tusker elephant; and instead of shepherding it gently towards the guns, a number of foolish young sepoys, armed only with sticks, had rushed boldly at it with wild yells. Luckily it did not attack them, but escaped out to one side of the beat. At the other end of the line the men had come on a small herd of sambhur, including two stags, and in their excitement had valiantly charged them in the absurd hope of taking them alive. A sambhur stag with his sharp horns and the driving-power of his great weight behind them is no mean foe; and it was just as well that the deer had fled from the men and broke out through a gap in the line.
We tried a beat lower down the river, which resulted in the men putting up a panther. But again some foolishly daring spirits rushed at it to attack it with their sticks; and the animal got away at one end of the beat. Draj Khan caught a young sambhur fawn, a week old, and brought it to me in his arms. This and the khakur were our whole bag.
I was surprised to find that the burnt forest still sheltered so much life. As the fires do not advance very rapidly the wild beasts can generally keep ahead of them and escape. But I cannot understand how the harmless animals support existence when all their fodder is destroyed.
One night when Creagh and I were sitting in the bivouac after dinner in the dim light of a half moon, the idea occurred to me to take one of our elephants and wander along the bed of a river a few hundred yards away, in which, as there was still some water left, we might come upon wild animals drinking. So we got our rifles, and a pad was strapped on Khartoum's back. On her we passed out of the zareba surrounding the camp, in which most of the men lay asleep on their dhurries stretched on the ground; for the native requires no softer bed and can repose contentedly on paving stones. A couple of the Indian officers still sat talking by a fire near the shelter of boughs erected for them by their men. We answered the sentry's challenge and turned Khartoum down a path from the bivouac to the water. It lay faintly white in the misty moonlight which barely lit up the ground under the leafless trees. Not a hundred yards from the camp the mahout stopped Khartoum suddenly and pointed to a black object which indistinctly blurred the path.
"A bear, Sahib," he whispered.
It was too dark to see my rifle-sights; but I rapidly tied my handkerchief round the barrel and tried to aim at the shadowy outline of the animal. Unluckily at that moment it moved off the path and entered a patch of shadow under a tree which still kept its leaves. I fired both barrels in quick succession without result and the bear scuttled away among the trees. We tried to follow it but could not find it again.
When we reached the river-bed, down the middle of which a narrow stream still ran, we wandered up it for a couple of miles in the misty light. It was a curious sensation to be roaming noiselessly—for Khartoum's feet made no sound on the soft sand—in the dead of night through the silent jungle. Far away a khakur's harsh bark rang out suddenly once or twice, giving warning of the presence of some beast of prey; but otherwise all was still. We disturbed a few deer drinking; and they dashed away up the nullah in alarm. But we saw no wild elephant or tiger, such as I had hoped to come upon; and so we turned and made for camp again.
On our return to Buxa the hills near us were bare and blackened; but farther away the fires still blazed. The heat and the oppression of the smoky atmosphere were still almost unendurable. But one night in the first week of April I was awakened by a terrific peal of thunder right overhead, which shook my bungalow and echoed and re-echoed among the hills. Another followed, as the intense darkness was lit up by a blinding lightning flash. And a dull moaning sound advancing from the plains below and steadily increasing to a roar made me sit up in bed and wonder what was about to happen. It drew near; and then a torrential downpour of tropical rain beat down on the Station. My iron roof rattled as if millions of pebbles were being flung on it. The noise was so great that I lay awake for hours.