on a light carriage, which two men could wheel with ease.
The cannon were carried to the scene of action on elephants. The
cavalry were seven hundred strong, drawn from the borders of
Manipur.

The rest of the army were armed with swords and spears, and carried
implements for stockading and entrenching. The force was accompanied by
a number of astrologers; and by the Invulnerables--who had, doubtless,
satisfactorily explained their failure to capture the pagoda.

A great semicircle of light smoke, rising from the trees, showed
that the position taken up by Bandoola extended from the river
above Kemmendine to the neighbourhood of Rangoon. On the night of
the 31st, the troops at the pagoda heard a loud and continuous stir
in the forest. It gradually approached and, by morning, great
masses of troops had gathered at the edge of the jungle, within
musket shot of the post. The garrison there were drawn up in
readiness to repel a sudden rush but, just as the sun rose, a din
made by thousands of men engaged in cutting down the trees began,
and it was evident that the Burmese were going to adopt their usual
plan of entrenching themselves behind stockades.

During the time that had elapsed between the repulse of the
Invulnerables and the arrival of Bandoola's army, Stanley's work
was light, and the life dull and monotonous. An hour was spent,
every morning, in examining the fugitives who had, by the retreat
of the Burmese, been enabled to make their way back to the town;
and of women who had escaped from the vigilance of the Burmese
police, and had come in from the villages where they had been held
as hostages for their husbands. Once or twice a week, he went off
with the general to the hospital ship, to inquire into the state of
the sick and to pay a visit to the long line of cots along the main
and lower deck. Almost every day he rode, in spite of the weather,
to one or other of the regimental camps; and soon came to know most
of the officers of the force. His previous experience on the rivers
had done much to acclimatise him, and his health continued good.

On the evening of the 30th he had, at the general's order, ridden
up to the pagoda. It was considered likely that the attack would be
delivered there in the first place and, at three o'clock in the
morning, when it became evident that a large body of men were
approaching through the forest, he galloped back to Rangoon with
the news and, at five, rode out again with S