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