"These contrivances are very clever," he said; "and there is no doubt that now your sepoys know how to make themselves and their officers very comfortable with the help only of jungle materials. All this is very ingenious and practical." After lunch the General inspected the defences and asked to see the sepoys man them. I led him up the ladder into the _machân_ or platform occupied by the sentry in a tree over the river-bank. The men were all shut up in their huts. "Give the alarm," I said to the sentry. He gathered in his hand the strings leading from the _machân_ to the officers' and section-leaders' quarters and pulled them. Throughout the fort we could faintly hear the stones rattling in the suspended tins. Instantly the fronts of the huts were raised; and the men of each section came silently out in line and went straight to the loopholes they had been posted to. "That is the best device I have seen yet," said General Bower. "The whole camp can be simultaneously aroused at once without any noise being heard by an approaching enemy, who would remain in ignorance of the fact that the defenders were on the alert. Consequently they would come on confidently in fancied security until they exposed themselves to a sudden fire at close range." Climbing down from the _machân_ he inspected the booby trap. At a signal, men inside the wall cut the creepers supporting the outer end of the bamboo platform which fell on its hinges and sent an avalanche of rocks into the _nullah_ below. As soon as it was dark we went out on to the gallery projecting over the river-bed. From it cords led to bombs buried in the sand and piled around with stones. They were made of bamboos filled with powder and fitted with a rifle cartridge so arranged that, on pulling the cord, a rock fell on a nail which struck the cartridge-cap and exploded the bomb. We fired these off one after another. The explosions hurled the stones in all directions with terrific force. Captain Balderston had devised an arrangement similar to the old Roman catapults for throwing hand-grenades over a hundred yards. He gave us an exhibition of this. On the sand of the river-bed bonfires had been piled to be set on fire by flares ignited by men tripping against cords laid along the ground. These were now worked; and the flames rose high and lit up the _nullah_ clearly, so that anyone in it was plainly visible from the fort. Our dinner that night in the thatched bamboo hut dignified by the title of "Officers' Mess" was quite a festive affair. Our forest fare was much appreciated by our visitors; for it comprised _sambhur_ soup, roast jungle fowls and the delicate venison of a barking deer. But the river was not called upon to supply the liquor for our feast. General Bower was as full of good stories as ever; and long after the sepoys had turned in for the night their slumbers must have been disturbed by the hearty laughter of their Sahibs in the Mess.