GRIFFINS IN INDIA

the vigour and bravery of the flank companies appointed
to head a storming party, ready in one instant to rush
into the breach, careless alike of horse-tails and towels.
Let it be supposed, however, that you have successfully
beaten back the enemy. You next promptly form an
opening, not a hair's breadth larger than your own
person, into which you leap, like harlequin through a
hoop, or, to borrow Jack's phrase, "as if the devil
kicked you on endl" Of course, with all the speed of
intense fear, you close up the gap through which you
have shot yourself into your sleeping quarters.

If all these arrangements have been well managed,
you may amuse yourself for a while by scoffing at, and
triumphing over the clouds of baffled mosquitoes out-
side, who dash themselves against the meshes of the net,
in vain attempts to enter your sanctum. If, however,
for your sins, any one of their number has succeeded in
entering the place along with yourself, he is not such
an ass as to betray his presence while you are flushed
with victory, wide awake, and armed with the means of
his destruction. Far from this, the scoundrel allows
you to chuckle over your fancied great doings, and to lie
down with all the complacency and fallacious security
of your conquest, and under the entire assurance of
enjoying a tranquil night's rest. Alas for such pre-
sumptuous hopes 1 Scarcely have you dropped gradu-
ally from these visions of the day to the yet more blessed
visions of the night, and the last faint effort of your eye-
lids has been quite overcome by the gentle pressure of
sleep, when, in deceitful slumber, you hear something
like the sound of trumpets.

Straightway your imagination is kindled, and you
fancy yourself in the midll of a fierce fight, and strug-
gling, not against petty insects, but against armed men
and thundering cannon-I In the excitement of the
mortal conflict of your dream, you awake, not displeased
mayhap, to find that you are safe and snug in beet But

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