to take men out with him,
and invariably did the work personally and alone.

The mystery of the explosion on the night we write of was explained next
morning when a party sallied forth to see what damage had been done.
They found, instead of dismembered men, the remnants of a poor little
hare which had strayed across the fatal line of danger and been blown to
atoms. Thus do the lives of the innocent too often fall a sacrifice to
the misdeeds of the guilty!

Next night, however, the defenders were roused by a real attack.

The day had been one of the most trying that the new arrivals had yet
experienced. The seasoned men, who had been formed by Nature,
apparently, of indestructible material, said it was awful. The
thermometer stood at above 110 degrees in the shade; there was not a
breath of air moving; the men were panting, almost choking. Even the
negroes groaned, and, drawing brackish water from a well in the fort,
poured it over their heads and bodies--but with little benefit, for the
water itself was between 95 and 100 degrees!

"It'll try some o' the new-comers to-night, if I'm not mistaken,"
remarked one of the indestructible men above referred to, as he rose
from dinner and proceeded to fill his pipe.

"Why d'you think so?" asked Sergeant Hardy, whose name was appropriate,
for he continued for a long time to be one of the indestructibles.

"'Cause it's always like this when we're goin' to have a horrible
night."

"Do the nights vary much?" asked Armstrong, who was still busy with his
knife and fork.

"Of course they do," returned the man. "Sometimes you have it quite
chilly after a hot day. Other times you have it suffocatin'--like the
Black Hole of Calcutta--as it'll be to-night."

"What sort o' hole was that?" asked Simkin, whose knowledge of history
was not extensive.

"It was a small room or prison into which they stuffed a lot of our men
once, in India, in awful hot weather, an' kep' them there waitin' till
the Great Mogul, or some chap o' that sort, should say what was to be
done wi' them. But his Majesty was asleep at the time, an' it was as
much as their lives was worth to waken him. So they had to wait, an'
afore he awakened out o' that sleep most o' the men was dead--suffocated
for want o' fresh air."

"I say, Mac, pass the water," said Moses Pyne. "It makes a feller feel
quite gaspy to think of."

The weather-prophet proved to be right. That night no one could sleep a
wink, e