When my detachment was encamped around Forest Lodge the scene at night, as I looked down from my windows, was truly Rembrandtesque. Their fires glowed in the trees, lighting up the dark faces of the sepoys and revealing with weird effect the huge forms of our transport elephants restlessly swaying at their pickets, ears flapping and trunks swinging as the big beasts incessantly shifted their weight from foot to foot. Around the bivouac was built a zareba of cut thorny bushes; and the guards mounted with ball cartridge in their pouches, not merely because it is the custom of the Service, but to repel any prowling dangerous beasts that might be tempted to visit the camp by night; for within fifty yards of a sentry I had a shot at a bear; and a tiger killed a _sambhur_ not a hundred yards from the zareba. And once I sat at the window of my tree-dwelling listening to a tiger prowling around for a long time, uttering short snorting roars but never approaching near enough to give me a shot at him. The voices of the men in the camp sounded loud through the silent forest and must have astonished the wild animals making their way to the salt lick close by, for at night all the jungle is awake. The beasts of prey wander from sunset to sunrise in search of a meal; and the deer must be on the alert against them. Only in the hot hours of the day dare they repose in security and lie down to sleep in the shade of the undergrowth. Even then they start at every sound, and the snapping of a twig brings them to their feet; for to the harmless animals life in the jungle is one constant menace. The birds and the monkeys in the trees alone can devote the dark hours to slumber; there is no rest at night for anything that dwells on the ground. Now gradually the sepoys' voices die away and the flickering fires burn low. The forest is hushed in silence, broken only by the eerie cry of the great owl or the distant crash of a tree knocked down by a wild elephant. CHAPTER VI ROGUES OF THE FOREST The lord of the forest--Wild elephants in India--_Kheddah_ operations in the Terai--How rogues are made--Rogues attack villages--Highway robbers--Assault on a railway station--A police convoy--A poacher's death--Chasing an officer--My first encounter with a rogue--Stopping a charge--Difficulty of killing an elephant--The law on rogue-shooting--A Government gazette--A tame elephant shot by the Maharajah of Cooch Behar--Executing an elephant--A chance shot--A planter's escape--Attack on a tame elephant--The _mahout's_ peril--Jhansi's wounds--Changes among the officers in Buxa--A Gurkha's terrible death--The beginner's luck--Indian and Malayan _sambhur_--A shot out of season--A fruitless search--Jhansi's flight--A scout attacked by a bear--Advertising for a truant--The agony column--Runaway elephants--A fatal fraud--Jhansi's return.