back, convinced, at last, that I must have passed the camp, and that our rough road-making operations had not reached to here, though the darkness prevented my seeing the axe or spade marks, which else had been a sure guide. Even these had misled me before darkness fell, for the working party had gone far ahead of camp, and I had seen their marks when I struck the real road, above the detour made by the Shans. I noted at my furthest point that one great tree had fallen against another. We passed that spot later when we advanced, and it was close to the Shan camp. Had I gone but a little further, I should have fallen into their hands! I turned my horse round, but we had not gone far when she ran her head into a bamboo clump, and, rearing up, pirouetted round. When she once more stood still, I had not the remotest idea which way I had come, in what direction the Shan camp lay, or what were the points of the compass! I dismounted, and felt for the cart ruts with my hands to see if I were on the path. I went on, absolutely at sea as to whether I ought to turn to the right, the left, or the right-about!

If my reader has never been really lost in an interminable forest like this, I think it is almost impossible for him to realise the appalling misery of it. All those qualities which go to form our manhood are valueless; resolution, endurance, common sense, resource, self-reliance, are each and all useless. One is the victim of mere doubt. Halfa-dozen steps in one direction, and one becomes convinced, as though by supernatural intuition, that that direction is but leading us directly away from our goal! If we reverse our steps, the same conviction steals on us again! Reduced to the helplessness of a child, a child's fancies and fears throng the brain; aimless wandering, death by starvation, torture by the Shans, seem the only alternatives! Already I was dead beat with the fatigue of a long and very hard day's work; I had eaten nothing

A FIREMAN'S LIFE.

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since morning, and it was no mere fancy that the Shans would have a "high old time" with me if they got me. These people are very cruel. Their methods of killing their enemies are not pleasant to contemplate. Among those which we had heard of as authentic were the following: Tying the victim to a tree, and cutting open his stomach with a single dah-cut, so that he was eaten alive, like Prometheus, by vultures and ants! tying him over a young bamboo shoot, so that it grew through him (as the growth of a young bamboo is extremely rapid)! thrusting bamboo splinters between the nail and the flesh of the hand, &c. Morbid fancies apart, however, I was terribly hungry, and in about as awkward a case as one could well imagine.

Now,

Luckily, a jungle instinct had led me to notice, while yet I knew the direction I had come from, that I was riding with the Pleiades in front of me. when I had lost all count of direction, I eagerly looked out for a break in the bamboo tops, and I found I was once more going straight towards the Pleiades, and hence towards the Shan camp! For the second time I reversed my steps. We wandered on; a faint moon rose and glimmered through the foliage, and at last I sighted the stockade I had passed at eleven miles from Kyenyat. I shouted my best, and momentarily expected a bullet in reply; for the little Ghoorkhas who manned it I knew well, and they stand on no ceremony. Had they heard a voice or seen a figure in the forest in the night, they would of course conclude it was the enemy, and greet me with a volley. Fortune favoured me, and I was soon standing by a roaring fire in the stockade, half naked, while I dried my soaking clothes at the fire. For the first and last time in my life, I broke into Government stores! The stockade contained stacks of boxes of Armour's "bully beef," containing thousands of tins. My hunger knew no law.

There was nothing to open the tin with, so I solemnly laid it on the ground and chopped it bodily in half with a Ghoorkha's kookerie.

Yet again my thoughts wander with the memories recalled by the stars. I conjure up a picture of myself, dressed in fireman's kit, seated straddle-legged on the topmost roof of a house in the East of London. It was a huge fire,-one of the biggest known for years. Oil-matting factories had got ablaze, and tanks of oil defied all attempts to extinguish them. Every station in London had sent engines, and the sea of roaring flame, and the molten mass of red-hot brick and flaming gas-jets was a sight I shall not readily forget. There are moments, of course, when the fireman is exposed to heat, but, paradoxical as it may seem, the exposure is rather to cold and wet. The torrents of water played by the hoses drench you through and through, and chill you to the bone. A small neighbouring house was alight in the roof, and as I was the only one who happened to be present who could draw myself through a tiny trap-door in the ceiling, I went up to work the hand-pump and unroof the tiles from the rafters. Below and in front of me lay the Gehenna of flame; hoses from fifty quarters played vainly upon it. Occasionally a jet of water would be turned towards my direction, drenching me to the skin, and it was cold, wet work for a November night in London !

There is pleasure in " galloping," as it is called. The alarm-bell has sounded; in less seconds than it takes to tell it, the horses are in and the men seated, and we are tearing down the road. "Make way for the engine!!!" No need for the cry rushes on, and all must yield the road. Round the corners we go without a check-these firemen drive superbly--in the stillness of night. The uncertainty of the work before us, the dash and verve of the

Like Fate it