With the glasses I tried to pierce the shadows of the forest, but the foliage was too thick, and the only indications of the struggle that was going on there under its vast roof of leaves, and between its serried tree-trunks, were the occasional puffs of smoke filtering through the verdure, the distant rat! tat! tat! of the rifles, punctuated now and again by a sharp crack of an exploding dynamite cartridge as it splintered the massive bole of a banyan or teak. I handed back the glasses to the kindly "non-com," and watched the artillerymen working the guns. They were firing slowly now, one a minute. A captain, standing behind the centre of the line of long-necked, vicious-looking field-pieces, gave the command: "_Première pièce ... feu!_" "Bang!" howled the ugly war-dog as it skidded back a yard on its locked wheels, and from the distant forest came back the sharp crack of the bursting shell, easily distinguished from the other reports arising from the wood. The rebels were not the only sufferers from the guns, for the continued detonations had driven from their usual haunts the herds of deer which frequented the region, and in consequence the tigers, missing their prey, were prowling about empty and enraged. At night their weird "cop! cop! cop!" occasional snarl, or gruesome roar would waken the stillness of the jungle, as they roamed around our camp; and on several occasions I experienced an uncomfortable icy feeling from the back of the neck downwards when these sounds approached me during my two hours of sentry-go in the dark. Our column lost two coolies and three commissariat bullocks, both men and cattle being carried away by these "striped devils," as the natives called them. A _tirailleur_ sentry belonging to the Thaï-Nguyen force also fell a victim to their hunger.