[Gutenberg 37782] • Life in an Indian Outpost

Excerpt: ...of the leaves are shed, I noticed with satisfaction that the ground around below my machan would be well lighted when the moon rose. My orderly and two sturdy-limbed Bhuttia coolies were up in a tree over the kill, tying an inverted charpoy, or native bed (which makes the best and most comfortable machan) in a fork, and hanging leafy branches around it to screen it from sight. I climbed up and tried to enter it. It was awkwardly placed and overhung me. I succeeded in getting my chest on the edge, when the rotten framework broke and nearly precipitated me to the earth, thirty feet below. I managed to save myself and sat astride a branch while one of the coolies cut a few bamboos from a clump close by and repaired the damage. Then I got into the machan, laid a packet of sandwiches and my Thermos flask beside me, loaded my rifle and, sending my orderly and the Bhuttias away, settled myself for my lonely vigil. I amused myself at first by watching the birds preparing for the night. A troop of monkeys came to drink in the neighbouring nullah and passed overhead, leaping through the branches, hurling themselves from tree to tree, chasing each other in play or pausing now and then for a comfortable scratch. Mothers with tiny babies clinging closely to them sprang across the voids and swung themselves by hand or foot. A peacock sailed down majestically from the tree-tops to the water and gave its weird cat-like cry. The heavy flapping of Pg 156 wings and an eerie wail told of a big owl bestirring itself early. The harsh "honk" of a sambhur stag rang out; and the sharp bark of a khakur sounded at regular intervals. The sun sank lower and the twittering of the birds faded into silence. The drone of the multitudinous insect-life, unceasing in the day, yet only heard plainly at the hour when the louder sounds of larger life are hushed, seemed to rise now with startling distinctness. But even it died; and only the irritating hum of the mosquitoes around my...