IV. foot of the blue hills, and we climbed a steep mule path for some hours. The Panthay mules march unlinked, the head of the convoy being led by a pony with a collar of blue beads, from which hangs a bell. The mules follow him happily, while another pony with a bell brings up the rear, so that the drivers know by the tinkling where the head and tail are. Since convoys straggle out on mountain roads, this is a very useful device. The next day was to be occupied in getting stores and the mule column across the river, and we would start the day after from Waimong, on the opposite bank, but two or three miles lower down-stream. At early dawn, the fresh dawn of a cool Burma day, in a land in which there were few enough human beings to help spoil the air, I sallied forth to watch my convoy cross the river. The mules were all hired, being owned by Panthays, an interesting Chinese race which had adopted Islam when that faith made great progress in Yunnan a few centuries ago. I found that the Chinaman in charge of the mules was, to my surprise, named Sheikh Ibrahim, instead of, as I had expected, Nankipoo, or something of that sort. The mules were to swim, while the stores crossed by raft. It was simple enough. Sheikh Ibrahim started to cross in a small boat, and a hundred yards from the shore whistled to his mules, whereupon the good of which the good of which were bad, and a creatures took to the water, and followed after for a thousand yards' swim. The first day's march was uneventful enough over level jungle route. The evening was spent at a Shan-Talok, or The route was uneventful and beautiful. No tribesmen were seen, friendly or otherwise, and the most exciting item was an occasional bamboo partridge, or a rocketing jungle fowl (the domestic fowl in its original state), a mettlesome game-bird which takes some shooting. By mid-day we had reached our camping-ground, a clearing outside the Kachin village of Hpong-a-Tong. The folk of the village had brought in some eggs to sell, most Kachin lass or two had come to giggle. All was peaceful and friendly. The Pax Britannica had descended on the mountain-side almost by a miracle. The route led down a steep Chinese-Shan village, a people path for four or five miles, who had settled of recent years to the Namli Chaung, a stream of some width, but fordable. From the ford the road would rise steeply a thousand feet to the Kritu ridge, where we were to spend the night, and whence we should see in the distance the village of Sadon, and the new stockaded post on a hill five hundred feet above the village. The jemadar proposed, when we left the camp, that he with three of the party should ride on ahead, and get through the two marches in one, as he had letters and tobacco which the officers in Sadon wanted. I agreed to this, and half an hour after we had left our camping-ground he started off. The road down from Hpong was very steep, and I proceeded on foot, wondering casually if any power on earth would make me ride at a pace down the hill. It was a beautiful morning: the partridge and jungle fowl were calling, and dew glistened on the foliage. As the path wound and zigzagged downwards occasional openings among the trees gave delightful vistas of opposite hillsides and the river below, with here and there village clearings on the slopes. Four of the men were now marching with me at the head of the little convoy, and five were in the rear, while I could hear by the jingle of the rearward ponies' bells that the convoy was well closed up. It was pleasant walking: butterflies were hovering, and now and again a flock of paraquets passed one on their way to their morning water, chattering and scintillating. I essayed V. to hold converse with the little, cheery, round-headed Mongolians by my side, but their knowledge of Hindustani was slight, while the Parwatya, or hill language of India, was beyond me. Nevertheless I was evidently amiable enough, and a white man to be trusted, so the broadest of grins prevailed on all those youthful moon-faces. The Panthay drivers were singing and chattering behind, and shouting abuse on the female relatives of any mule that turned aside to take more than a passing snatch at a tuft of grass. Away in the distance a shot came echoing up the valley. Then another-apparently some villager was frightening away the jungle deer from his crops or whatnot. Indeed, we had heard the same the day before. It was very pleasant and rather drowsy, and we could now hear the river below us. Noonday was approaching, when all would rest and listen to the whisper of the winds and the murmur of the waters. Then into this peace a clatter of hoofs, and round the corner came a mounted infantryman on his Burman pony, minus his Kilmarnock cap, and in his hand a drawn sword. His carbine-they were armed with Snider carbines-was missing, and his eyes were starting from scuttled down that breakneck his stolid moon-face. "Daku log, Daku log nadi men, bahut-hi Daku log!' (There are many dacoits down in the river.) After some cross-questioning it appeared that the jemadar and his three men were girthdeep in the ford when a burst of musketry broke out from the other bank, which was then observed to have morchas 1 all along it. The party turned back, but one man fell in the ford, his pony being shot, and had been rescued minus his carbine and dragged to the bank. The jemadar and two men were lying down on the bank and firing, as we could now and again hear. The steepness of that path vanished. I got on to my sure-footed Arab, and three of the four men with me mounted. I told the remaining man to get the rear party to close up and follow on, and, together with the messenger of evil, we path. It was half a mile to the river level. Dismounting in the jungle fifty yards from the bank, and leaving the messenger, who had no carbine, with the horses, I crept to find the jemadar in the cover at the edge of the bank. There was a crackle of musketry from the other bank, and I could hear the answering Snider a good noisy bird this Snider, which the modern generation knows not. It was extinct, even in those days, save for irregulars, being the converted Enfield rifle and carbine, and had the merit of making a wound that did not heal rapidly, and of loading slowly, which is good for halftrained soldiers. The jemadar and I held whispered converse. He opined that there was evidently a rising, that the whole countryside must be up, and that the best place for us was the road back to Myitkyina as fast as our legs would carry us. at it the less you liked it, so I decided to make straight for the parapet. My three eager Gurkhas plunged after me into the water, and we were soon up to our shoulders stumbling over boulders and battling with the stream. We were too busy trying to make progress, and to keep our foothold, to take much notice of the fire from the island, or the hot fusilade from the long line of entrenchments on the opposite bank, from which the bullets were now splashing up the water around us, and rattling against the boulders. For the first and last time in my life I had the traditional sword in one hand and pistol in the other as I slipped and stumbled over the rocks. When we emerged on to the little island, the enemy, to the number of half a dozen, scuttled into the next piece of water, making for the entrenchments on the main bank, perhaps sixty yards away. As soon as our breath had returned we too plunged into the water again, but slanted down-stream to get on to what I imagined was the flank of the long line of stockade which covered the ford. By now we could be clearly seen, and bullets skimmed and flicked round us again, shoulder high as we were amid the jumping water and the big round rocks. Fortunately no one was hit, and we were able to crawl breathless but uninjured to some bushes overhanging the bank. As I had hoped, we were down-stream of the stockade, against which the jemadar was steadily firing, while within the enemy's line gongs were sounding and musketry still spluttering. It was now possible to rush into the flank of the stockade, and after a few moments' rest I called on my bullet-headed lads to do so. They were game enough, and lay clasping their wet carbines, and grinning up in my face for all the world like a lot of otter-hounds. It was now time to draw the otter, and with the best yell that we could muster, we charged through the bushes, and found ourselves behind the revetted stockade. It was full of gentlemen in blue, shouting and waving arms and muskets, who at our entrance scuttled back into the heavy bamboojungle which edged the river. A good deal of rice, in bundles ready cooked, lay about, one or two large Kachin umbrellas, hats, a matchlock or two also, and a powderhorn, and that was all. I found the stockade was made of split bamboo filled with earth and stones, the bamboo serving as a revetment back and front. Large hollow bamboos in two-feet lengths had been stuck as loopholes trained on the ford and its approaches, into which a musket jammed and fired must shoot fairly straight. Putting two of my men as a look-out, I called to the jemadar to come over with his party, which he did, marvelling greatly at the size of the hostile works and the strength of the enemy which it indicated. The first thing to do was to decide on our course of action. I had intended to wait for the night with the convoy in the village of Kritu, on the ridge five miles on, which was the usual stage. That was now out of the question. We were too small a party to face a night in the jungle. We must either go on or go back. The jemadar thought we could not possibly get through. The whole country was up, and he gave it as his opinion that the Chinese Black Flags, known to be very averse to any policing of the trade routes, had crossed the border to stir up a rising. He had heard rifles among the muskets, which meant Chinese pirates. But I had other views. We had carried matters off with a high hand; we had impressed the tribesmen with our dash, and they probably magnified our strength, and I jolly well meant to see it through. Besides, I knew that our stores were badly needed by the force at Sadon. The otterhounds looked in good heart, and the master, who had only made his hounds' acquaintance two days before, was going to give 'em a hunt. The realise our weakness. jemadar shrugged his shoulders, as if to say there's no fool like a young fool, but the psychological effect of the white face was enough, and the hounds did not care two hoots. But had I known what was coming I might have thought harder. As soon as the Panthay mules had jingled down the hillside and crossed the ford, I pushed on with the jemadar and six men, leaving the corporal and three behind, and two leading the ponies. While we mustered, the mules were fed on the cooked rice left behind by the Kachins. Then we climbed for a mile or so of steep mountain path amid thick bamboo jungle, which waved like ladies' feathers above us. But we soon discovered that we were followed and observed. From a bluff above, a piquet fired a couple of shots, and now and again a musket squibbed in the jungle, and a hammered bullet sizzled overhead with that peculiar noise which is not often heard in these days of universal rifledom. Three miles passed without more incident than this, and we could now see the village of Kritu on a steep spur above us. "We shall get it in the neck here," muttered Kesri Singh ; "it is a very big village, and they fought us two months ago." However, whether from the effect of our passage of the ford below, or whether they had other plans, we entered There was no time to be lost if I was to see the convoy right through before dark, another sixteen mountain miles, and to move on before the Kachins and Chinese could the village unmolested, and |