It had been raining heavily for one whole month -- raining on a camp of thirty thousand men and thousands of camels , elephants , horses , bullocks , and mules all gathered together at a place called Rawal Pindi , to be reviewed by the Viceroy of India . He was receiving a visit from the Amir of Afghanistan -- a wild king of a very wild country . The Amir had brought with him for a bodyguard eight hundred men and horses who had never seen a camp or a locomotive before in their lives -- savage men and savage horses from somewhere at the back of Central Asia . Every night a mob of these horses would be sure to break their heel ropes and stampede up and down the camp through the mud in the dark , or the camels would break loose and run about and fall over the ropes of the tents , and you can imagine how pleasant that was for men trying to go to sleep . My tent lay far away from the camel lines , and I thought it was safe . But one night a man popped his head in and shouted , `` Get out , quick ! They 're coming ! My tent 's gone ! '' I knew who `` they '' were , so I put on my boots and waterproof and scuttled out into the slush . Little Vixen , my fox terrier , went out through the other side ; and then there was a roaring and a grunting and bubbling , and I saw the tent cave in , as the pole snapped , and begin to dance about like a mad ghost . A camel had blundered into it , and wet and angry as I was , I could not help laughing . Then I ran on , because I did not know how many camels might have got loose , and before long I was out of sight of the camp , plowing my way through the mud . At last I fell over the tail-end of a gun , and by that knew I was somewhere near the artillery lines where the cannon were stacked at night . As I did not want to plowter about any more in the drizzle and the dark , I put my waterproof over the muzzle of one gun , and made a sort of wigwam with two or three rammers that I found , and lay along the tail of another gun , wondering where Vixen had got to , and where I might be . Just as I was getting ready to go to sleep I heard a jingle of harness and a grunt , and a mule passed me shaking his wet ears . He belonged to a screw-gun battery , for I could hear the rattle of the straps and rings and chains and things on his saddle pad . The screw-guns are tiny little cannon made in two pieces , that are screwed together when the time comes to use them . They are taken up mountains , anywhere that a mule can find a road , and they are very useful for fighting in rocky country . Behind the mule there was a camel , with his big soft feet squelching and slipping in the mud , and his neck bobbing to and fro like a strayed hen 's . Luckily , I knew enough of beast language -- not wild-beast language , but camp-beast language , of course -- from the natives to know what he was saying .
He must have been the one that flopped into my tent , XXXXX he called to the mule , `` What shall I do ?
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