But soon we had more than enough of other fires. The vast forests stretching through Assam, Bhutan, the Terai and Nepal, were dry as tinder owing to the unusual drought. From our eyrie in the hills we looked down at night on the glow in the sky, east, south and west, that told of jungles blazing around us. By day columns of smoke rose up in the distance and spread until a black pall covered the landscape. The hot wind brought the acrid smell of ashes and burning wood to us; and soon the air was full of smuts. From Assam and Bhutan came the tale of leagues of forest devoured by the flames. The dwellers in the pleasant Hill Station of Darjeeling, seven thousand feet above the sea, complained of the pall of smoke that veiled the mountains around them. Day after day I gazed apprehensively on our happy hunting-grounds in the forest below and feared to see them invaded by the conquering fires. I pictured with dismay the game destroyed by the rushing flames or driven far from us. And at last doubt became cruel certainty. Our forests blazed. The legions of the victorious fire king swept through the jungles we loved and denied them to us. But at first we did not realise that danger threatened us, that our small Station was itself imperilled. On a wooded spur below the fort stood two long bamboo-walled buildings, intended as a segregation hospital for cases of infectious disease. One afternoon news was brought me that the forest fires had crept up to the base of the hill on which they stood. I ran down to the fort and ordered out the whole detachment. The men in whatever garb they were wearing at the moment turned out; and we raced through the back gate and down a zigzag path cut on the face of the precipice on the south side of the fort. Then we struggled up the steep hill to the threatened buildings. Below us the forest blazed. The flames were sweeping up the slopes towards us. The sight was a fine one; but we had little leisure or inclination to admire it. Breaking branches from the trees we fell upon the advancing enemy and endeavoured to beat it back. The wind was against us. Sparks and burning embers flew past and set alight to the hill-top behind us. It was curious to see how the flames ran up the trees and, leaving the trunks unscathed, seized on the masses of orchids on the boughs. Their leaves and stems blazed fiercely as if filled with oil. Scorched by the heat, grimed with the flying ashes and smuts, officers and men fought shoulder to shoulder against the encroaching flames. In a long line we descended to meet them and beat down the burning undergrowth. Suddenly a sharp gust of wind carried a burst of fire against us. Smothered by the smoke, our clothes alight from the red cinders, we were forced back. The flames lit up a patch of tall grass, dry as tinder, which went up in a sheet of fire. We turned and ran up to the summit. But one unfortunate sepoy stumbled and fell; and the wave of flame swept over him.