"Soon enough the men returned from their errand, climbed inside the eagles, and then with a groan and trumpeting racket, they came alive and flew up in the air again. That left no doubt in my mind that they were men's chariots, and when I knew that I felt relieved. "Though everything looked strange at first it ceased to be so after we got used to it; yet the problem of sleeping soundly under the continual booming and barking noises remained unsolved. All those months in the army I never slept well. No wonder Hira and I were nervous and fidgety, like newly hatched snakes. "My first adventure consisted of taking a message from the Rasseldar at the front where all kinds of dogs barked and spat fire day and night. I must tell you a word about the Rasseldar. He was in charge of a lot of Indian warriors from Calcutta. He took me in a cage completely covered with black canvas, and with his forty men set out for the front trench. After going for hours and nights--for that is what it felt like in my darkened cage--we reached our destination. There the canvas was removed. Now I could see nothing but walls around me where turbaned men from India crawled like little insects. Overhead flew the mechanical eagles trumpeting with terror. Here for the first time I began to grasp sounds. Instead of one confused boom, boom, boom, there were as many grades of explosion as the ear could distinguish. The hardest one to make out was the talk of the men about me. Under the deafening sounds their talk sounded like the whisper of a lazy breeze in the grass. Now and then they unmuzzled a metal dog that barked--spitting out fire for a long stretch of time. Then came the laughter of a hyena. Hundreds of men goaded those little pups to an awful coughing--puck puff, puck puff, puck puff! That sound was drowned in the deep-toned cry of the eagles above who flew in flocks and barked as well as screeched like mad, slaying each other like so many sparrows. The Rasseldar who was in charge of me pointed the face of his pup at the sky, then let off--puck puff--some fire and lo! it brought down one of those eagles as if it were a rabbit. Now the deepest tone was heard. The boom bazoom bum bum! The tiger-roar of the large ones' mammoth majesty rose and spread like a canopy of divine chords, drowning under its engulfing immensity all other petty sounds. Oh! the excruciating enchantment of that organ tone. Can I ever forget! Roar upon roar, titanic tonality on tonality, like cataclysmic boulders of sounds crashed and clamoured! "Why does beauty lie so close to death? Hardly had the ineffable glory of that supernal music overhead seized my soul when balls of fire fell about us like a torrential rain. Men fell and succumbed like rats in flooded holes. The Rasseldar, who was bleeding and red, wrote hastily on a piece of paper, tied it to my feet and uncaged me. I knew by the look in his eyes that he was in dire distress and wanted Ghond to bring him succour.