For twenty yards beyond the ditches the ground was covered with a five-feet-high entanglement of felled trees. Their butts were lashed to stout pegs driven deep into the earth. Their thinner branches were lopped off, the thicker ones cut and trimmed with sharp points towards the front. In military parlance this is called an _abattis_. Anyone endeavouring to rush the defences of our fort would have found it a difficult feat, even if no bullets were showered on him from the loopholes. He would first have to force his way through twenty yards of entanglement, then climb a sharp-pointed fence, pass the _chevaux de frise_ in the ditch, get by the downward-pointing _panjis_, evade the six-foot stakes projecting from the face of the stockade, and climb over the stockade itself through the overhead tangle of branches. And to do it under a hot fire would be almost impossible. To attack such a post successfully guns would be necessary--and a well-built double stockade would withstand light artillery. For our own use winding paths led through the _abattis_ to drawbridges before the two gates. These latter were of bamboo, hinged at the top and opening outwards and upwards, supported when open by high, forked poles. In each was a small wicket constructed on the same principle and only wide enough to admit one man at a time. Wickets and gates were stuck thick with projecting _panjis_. Trees in the interior of the post were left standing to give shade, as were others growing in the line of the defences. And in the latter, forty feet from the ground, were platforms reached by ladders and hidden by the leafy branches. On them the sentries were stationed; and from them, during a night attack, men could fire and hurl bombs down on the assailants who would find it difficult to locate their position. From these sentry posts stout cords of twisted _udal_ fibre led to kerosene oil tins hung up in the quarters occupied by officers and section commanders. In the tins stones were put, so that a pull on the cords would rattle the tins throughout the post and arouse the defenders without an approaching enemy being aware that the alarm had been given. So much for the defences. As such a post would be constructed with a view to long occupation the question of housing the garrison comfortably remained. In the interior along each face two huts, each to hold a section of twenty or twenty-five men, with huts for the native officers, were built. The roofs were thickly thatched. The back and side walls were made of two rows of bamboo a foot apart, with rammed earth between them. The front walls were lightly made of bamboo and hinged at the top to open outwards and upwards in an emergency, so that the whole section could come out in line. For ordinary use a small door sufficed. Along the back wall ran a sloping guard-bed, with a broad shelf underneath, on which the sepoys' clothing could be laid. Overhead were pegs for their rifles and accoutrements.