r, but, finding it closed, he went away again. The
villages all round seemed deserted, and I could only see two men driving
some cattle high up in the hills.

Before I had finished my sketch, the advance guard came up, and, shortly
after, Colonel Kelly. There was a short halt to let the tail of the
column close up, and then we commenced the descent. We were down on the
river bank in twenty minutes, and the Levies waded across, I on my pony.
We found the remains of a bridge which had evidently only just been
destroyed, and the material, I fancy, thrown into the river. The Levies
were soon up to the fort, and we had the main gate down in a jiffy by
using a tree as a battering-ram, and then the Levies went through the
place like professional burglars. Before I had hardly got into the
courtyard they had found the grain store, and were looting it. I put
Gammer Sing on sentry duty over the entrance, and, Borradaile coming up,
we inspected it, and found enough grain to last us some months. We now
set the Levies to work to get beams for repairing the bridge; at first
we could not find any long enough, until the Levies noticed the roof
poles of the verandah. We had them out and ran them down to the river
bank, opposite to where the Pioneers had drawn up on the farther bank.

It took some time to build the bridge, and it was pretty rickety when
done, but it saved the men having to ford. Only one man fell into the
river, but he was pulled out all right. The baggage did not arrive at
the bridge till dark, and most of the coolies waded across, as there was
not time for them to cross in single file on the bridge. The battery
also forded, but the donkeys had to be unladen and the loads carried
across by hand, and the donkeys were then driven in and made to swim. It
was night before the rearguard began to cross, Cobbe, who was in
command, not getting in till close on nine o'clock. A couple of shots
were fired after dark, and there seemed no satisfactory explanation as
to why they were fired, but nobody was hit. The coolies were all put
into the courtyard of the fort and a guard on the gate, and they soon
had fires going, round which they huddled.

As it was impossible to carry away all the grain we had found, I got
permission to issue a ration to all the coolies, who had most of them
no supplies of any description, and, telling the guard who had replaced
Gammer Sing to let the coolies in in single file, I then sent some
Levies to dri