guessing that he was planning and rehearsing battles, surprises, ambuscadoes, retreats, and divers other such warlike notions. But this ignorance and carelessness of mine was to receive a wholesome rebuke, and my friend’s foresight a most signal justification. “Sir,” says he, riding back to me one day when as we were coming down a steep hillside into a valley very thick with woods, “do you perceive the nature of the place through which our road now lies? Here is a spot most convenient of all for an ambuscado, and ’twill surprise me much if it ben’t made use on. With your permission, I’ll take three or four of the servants as skirmishers, and send ’em in advance on either side of the train.” “Methinks the Moors are scarce like to look at this point with your eye, which is that of a captain, sir,” said I; “but prythee, take the servants as you desire, and do your will. There is little possibility that those we have most cause to fear are here before us, but it may be that there is Rashpoot robbers laying wait for us, conceiving that we carry with us greater riches than we do.” “Let me entreat you to keep your servants well in line, sir,” said he, “and to suffer no loitering, for I am persuaded there is danger before us in this valley.” With that he took as many of the servants as he desired (for beside _cooleys_, we had now with us some ten or a dozen Moors, hired at Zauncy for to protect us through this wild country, and furnished with bucklers of skins and their strange crooked _cimeters_), and bid them search the wood on either side of the road, proceeding with great circumspection, and seeking to surprise the surprisers. Now our _cooleys_, observing these precautions, did not, as you would expect, feel all the safer by reason of the caution of their masters, but became pale and trembled greatly, so as their knees knocked together, and I saw that they were ready to run away if the slightest mischance should occur. Wherefore I placed the Moors so as to hinder them in this intention, and bade ’em cut down the first _cooley_ that tried to flee; and having mustered the whole train into as compact a body as I could, we entered upon the road through the valley. Now at our first entrance thereon, I noted this, that whereas in such places the birds of the forest were used to rise up and fly about on our appearing, here they were already seeming troubled and disturbed, and wheeling about among the trees as if distressed. Loll Duss come close to me on seeing this, and _Master_, says he, _there’s men in this jungle_ (which is their name for a wood). And on this strange confirming of my friend’s suspicions I was at first took aback, but quickly reflecting that there wan’t no way of continuing our journey save by passing through this wood, we went on without remark.