Colville of the Guards, Volume 3 (of 3)

CHAPTER XI.

IN HAMBURG STILL.

Ellinor was altogether unlike any other girl on whom the evil eyes of Herr Wyburg had rested, in Hamburg at least. Her face was so clearly cut, with pride in its contour, a dreamy thought its eyes, and something almost angelic in its purity—as Tennyson has it,

'A sight to make an old man young.'

The three days' unexpected absence of Sir Redmond rather alarmed Herr Wyburg. He knew not how to account for it, and mightily, with all his ruffianism, dreaded the gendarmes; thus he was genuinely glad when, in the dusk of the third day, the baronet presented himself at his house and inquired for his charge.

'She is silent and dull as usual, and anxious for the address of a lady friend,' replied Wyburg. 'I don't understand all this,' he added, in a growling tone; 'have you made a fool of this girl or of yourself?'

'Of myself as yet, I think,' replied Sleath, with an oath.

'Every man does so, once in his life at least, and generally oftener,' said the German; 'but I thought you were too wide awake for that now. With her sadness and her tears this girl is a profound bore to us, even if paid for! I wish you would take some means to cheer her—to please her—if you can.'

'Don't talk to me about the idiotic vagaries of a girl!' snapped Sir Redmond.

'I do not wish to do so, mem Herr; but what would you have me say?' replied Wyburg. 'Look here—it is all stuff and gammon about the Fraulein being your wife. I lived too long in England not to have my eyes opened.'

'Well?'

'You love her in your own fashion, I suppose?'

'And she?'

'Seems to hate you,' replied the German, with a grin.

'Perhaps she is not the first of her sex who has said no when she meant yes.'

'You don't mean to marry her, I suppose?'

'I have a wife, already,' replied Sleath. as he carefully manipulated and prepared a cigar.

'Der Teufel!' said Herr Wyburg, puffing out a cloud from his huge meerschaum, 'but such things will happen.'

'I have been engaged in many a lark and scrape, as you, Wyburg, know well enough, but never in one so peculiar as this. The girls who eloped with me before were always willing enough.'

'She may turn ill—downright ill—on our hands unless some change is brought about, and may have to be sent to the Krankenhaus; and then—what then?'

Sleath had not thought of this contingency, so he became alarmed and asked to see Ellinor.

On his entrance she rose at once and came towards him, her eyes dilated with hope or expectation and her lips parted, but without offering him a hand.

'You have news for me at last?' she said.

'News—about what—about whom?'

'Mrs. Deroubigne and Mary.'

'I have sent or gone daily to the post-office in the Post Strasse, but neither by telegraph nor inquiry can I discover their whereabouts in Brussels,' he replied, unblushingly: 'and even if we went there—'

'There! that is not to be thought of. I shall take the steamer for London,' exclaimed Ellinor, looking round her as if she would start that moment.

'No, you won't, my dear girl—yet a while, at least.'

'I shall go mad—mad if I am kept here prisoner for another day!' exclaimed Ellinor, wildly, as she wrung her hands and then pressed them on her temples, while Herr Wyburg looked with a kind of gloomy scorn from one to the other.

He had many experiences in his career, but this was to him one somewhat new.

Ellinor was so painfully agitated that Sir Redmond was fain to resort to the most specious falsehoods to soothe and calm her; he promised most solemnly to write or telegraph to the British Ambassador at Brussels, to the postal authorities there, and so forth; and, with intense anger and mortification in his heart at his bad success, he left her to rejoin Dewsnap, and have a 'deep drink' at the Hotel Russie, and perhaps a turn into the Schweitzer Pavilion, feeling inclined on one hand—all inflamed as he was with her beauty and helplessness—to force her in some way to love him; and on the other, to sail away with his friend in the Flying Foam, and leave her to her fate in the hands of Herr Wyburg!

He did neither for a day or two yet, but showered presents upon her; he ransacked the Neuer Wall and the Alster Wall for all kinds of pretty things, and bought up the best bouquets of the Vierlander flower-girls by the score; and Frau Wyburg only looked forward to the time when she could appropriate all the presents, when the girl was away or—dead.

All his presents and pretty trifles, over which Lenchen went into ecstasies, remained, as he saw, untouched in their cases or packing paper.

'You disdain all these things which I feel such delight in offering you,' said he, reproachfully.

She wrung her interlaced fingers, but made no reply.

A red gleam shot out of Sleath's eyes; he bit his lip, and the Frau Wyburg laughed, while her black orbs glittered mischievously, and her mouth wore its cruel expression more unpleasantly than usual.

But for his early entanglement with his mother's maid—Seraphina Fubsby, whose absurd name he loathed now—an event which too probably had warped his whole life, he felt at times—but at times only—that he would gladly have offered his hand and all he possessed to the sweet and gentle Ellinor; and, though he knew how she shrank from him, and loathed him, he could not help trying to play the old game he had begun at Birkwoodbrae, by urging again and again that his marriage was untrue, illegal, that he would prove it so, and also urging his wild, blind passion for herself, on the plea of her wonderful beauty, as Richard of England did his passion for the Lady Anne, having rarely found an appeal to a woman on that score fail him.

But he might as well have spoken to a statue now, and as she could extract no tidings of her sister or Mrs. Deroubigne from him, she thought only of escaping from the house of his odious friends. She was now aware that she had been entrapped by a specious story, and that neither Mary nor Mrs. Deroubigne would seem to have resided with them after leaving Altona, as Frau Wyburg and her husband, though 'coached' by Sleath and Gaiters, evidently knew nothing about them save their names, and a new dismay seized the unhappy girl.

Escaping—but how? The avenues to the street were too closely secured, and the window of her room was too high above the water of the Fleethen to afford the least chance of escape there; while the only boats that passed were those of the Vierlander people, laden with vegetables, pulled swiftly along at rare and distant intervals.

To appeal to the Wyburgs she knew would be vain. Her pure, pale face with its dreamy eyes, into which there now came a hunted expression, failed to win either their pity or commiseration; but escape she must, or die!

Ellinor knew now that in Sleath the animal nature predominated, and that she might have to suffer from his cruelty and violence if she remained in his power.

But how was she to escape without money, without a knowledge of the language, of the very locality in which he had placed her, without bodily strength, and with only intense horror and aversion to nerve and inspire her?

On whom could she cast herself?

Certainly not the repulsive Frau Wyburg, with her wicked black eyes and square, resolute jaws, or her equally repellent husband, with the leering eyes and ragged red moustache? What had she done that Fate should have cast her into such unscrupulous, and to her altogether inconceivable, hands?

'She grows paler, if possible, every day,' said Wyburg to Sleath. 'If this sort of thing goes on, it will be an affair for the Krankenhaus,' he added, in a growling voice, referring to the great public hospital in the suburb of St. George.

Dewsnap's yacht was getting ready for sea, and was now anchored by the dolphins, outside the Binnenhafen, and Sleath was resolved to end his affair with Ellinor in some fashion or other, for the hints of Wyburg alarmed him.

So he recommended to Ellinor a drive in an open droski, attended, not by himself—he was too wary for that—but by the Frau Wyburg and Gaiters, who was to have a seat on the dickey. He thought there was little to fear in this, as Ellinor knew not a word of German, and Gaiters was a careful fellow.

Indeed, Mr. John Gaiters—though to all appearance a thoroughly well-bred English serving-man, automaton-like in movements, reserved, and when it suited him most civil in speech, and without an atom of scruple—had one redeeming bull-dog feature in his character, and that was intense fidelity to his dissolute, yet liberal, master.

The afternoon was beautiful and sunny. The drive along the Jungfernsteig and Alster Damm was charming enough to rouse even Ellinor from her lethargy, but not to still her resolution to escape, if she could.

The scene, after all she had undergone of late, proved a gay and enchanting one—the rows of stately mansions; the quadruple lines of trees in full leaf; the deep blue of the Binner Alster, its bosom studded by pretty pleasure-boats, tiny steamers, and flocks of snow-white swans; and the German bands playing before the great hotels, which were all gaily decorated with the flags of various nations, as if for a holiday. But ere long there occurred that which to her was a crushing episode.

While Frau Wyburg stopped the droski to listen to a band that was playing amid a group of people before the great Kron Prinzen Hotel, Ellinor perceived a handsome open carriage close by, and in it were seated an elderly gentleman and two ladies, who had their eyes fixed on her.

The trio were Lord and Lady Dunkeld with their daughter, Blanche Galloway!

Ellinor started from her seat, as they were quite within earshot, and in their power lay succour—help—rescue!

'Lady Dunkeld—Lady Dunkeld—Mrs. Deroubigne!' she exclaimed, wildly; 'you can doubtless give me her address? You know me—you know me—Ellinor Wellwood!'

They all heard her; but Lord Dunkeld looked steadily askance, showing only the facial angle which he thought so like that of the Grande Monarque, while the two ladies gazed with wonder at first, and then with frigid hauteur; and Blanche, who, we have said, was strong in love, ambition, and hate, said something to the coachman, who drove away at once, while the usually imperturbable Gaiters, in some alarm, took the droski in an opposite direction, and Ellinor sank back despairing on her seat, as she was conveyed at a galloping pace back to the gloomy house overlooking the Bleichen Fleet. The deadly and sickening surmises of what these cold-hearted people thought, of what the world might say, think, or suspect, seemed now to take a tangible form, and the soul of the girl seemed to die within her.

It was so fated, however, that the secret of her adventures was never to be made known to the world of Mrs. Grundy—by the lips of Sir Redmond Sleath, at least.

While this daring and extraordinary conspiracy against the freedom and peace of Ellinor was in progress in that obscure and gloomy house, among the damp and miasmatic districts of the Fleethen, her sister Mary and Mrs. Deroubigne were still in the pretty villa at Altona.

The former was now in deep mourning—so deep that it was almost the same as the weeds of a widow, for she felt herself a widow in heart, indeed; and by the double loss she had endured the girl thought that Fate was very cruel to her.

She had received a pleasant, a delightfully-soothing letter from old Dr. Wodrow, condoling with her on the sad news from Cabul, all ignorant as he was yet of the escape of his son amid the new calamity in that fatal city—fatal to Britons, at least.

'Any place in which we are perfectly happy is a place we glorify and transform,' says a writer: and in the joy of her engagement to Leslie Colville, notwithstanding the perils he had to face, Mary had glorified their pretty abode by the Elbe at Altona.

That was all ended and over, and now the place had become to her one of double gloom, and associated with a double sorrow.

'Ah, Madame Deroubigne,' said the young Baron Rolandsburg, 'your charming villa has now not unnaturally become to you a place of calamitous associations—most unhomely,' he added. 'Ja-ja! it is always so after misfortunes come.'

And now as Altona had become so repugnant—a place of such horror to both Mary Wellwood and Mrs. Deroubigne, the time was fast approaching when they were to take their departure for London.

CHAPTER XII.

THE PLOT THICKENS.

Finding that his visits were fast making Ellinor seriously ill, Sir Redmond, at the request of Herr Wyburg, did not intrude upon her for a day or two, yet he called and left a sham message concerning his continued inquiries for Mrs. Deroubigne.

'Where are the friends of the Fraulein?' asked Herr Wyburg, twisting his coarse, red moustache; 'in England?'

'No, I rather think not,' replied Sir Redmond.

'Where, then?'

'They were in Altona last, I believe,' said the other, unguardedly.

'Altona! In Altona! Ach Gott! Then she is the Fraulein for information concerning whom, alive or dead, such rewards were offered by placards in the Bourse and in the Hamburger Nachtrichten.'

'Nonsense,' said Sleath, discovering that the admission was a mistake.

'It is no nonsense,' exclaimed Wyburg, trying to remember the amount of the reward offered, his cupidity at once excited by the consideration whether or not it was worth his while to betray his employer.

After the latter departed, he remembered the cunning and avaricious gleam that came into the watery grey eyes of the German, and a suspicion of his fidelity began to assume tangible shapes in the tainted mind of Sleath.

The chances that after all his trouble, care, cunning, and expense she might be delivered from his snares, taken from his power, an exposé made, and doubtless an appeal to the police of the city, to the British consul and the four burgomasters, before his intrigue had been successfully developed and Ellinor's voice silenced, filled him with exasperation; and cursing his own imprudent admission to Herr Wyburg, into whose hands he had thus put himself, he drank so deeply at his hotel that night that, between his passion for Ellinor, and fierce suspicion of his German tools, his mind became inflamed to a dangerous degree, and he resolved that before the church bells tolled midnight he would visit the persecuted girl, for the purpose of making assurance doubly sure with her and his two paid creatures.

'Yes,' he hiccupped, with an oath, as he was taken in a droski across the Adolphs-brucke and the Nuerwall, 'I'll end it all, or know the reason why! I have played the whining fool too long. Am I to pass my days in slaving to study her whim-whams?—to overcome her prudery and sham scruples? Am I a fool or a boy? Of what or of whom am I afraid? I will now listen only to the dictates of my own mind.'

He muttered much more to the same purpose aloud, and, quitting the droski at the corner of the Grosse Bleichen, thrust a double-mark into the driver's hand, and, without thinking of change, proceeded on foot to the house of Herr Wyburg.

A mass with three pointed gables, and each storey overhanging the other on beams of timber, rose before him. All was dark in and around it when he approached the door, and, tipsy though he was, he could hear—he thought—the beating of his heart, and for a moment—but a moment only—an emotion of timidity, even of shame, came over him.

'Pshaw!' he exclaimed, with a malediction, and rang the bell.

After some delay and parleying, he was admitted by the drowsy Lenchen, who surveyed him with more annoyance than respect in her visage; but he strode past her without a word, and ascended to Herr Wyburg's sitting-room.

He found that worthy attired in his grotesque Reiter-Diener costume, with his steeple-crowned hat and toledo on the table beside him. He was asleep in an easy-chair, and, after being at a funeral, had drank and smoked himself into a state of partial insensibility.

'I wish to see the Fraulein,' said Sleath to Frau Wyburg, who glanced at him inquiringly.

'She must be asleep,' was the answer.

'I must see and speak with her.'

'Ah, you have found her friends, then?' said Frau Wyburg, with one of her detestable leers.

Sleath made no reply, but, snatching a candle from the table, proceeded at once towards the apartment of Ellinor, with a strange pallor in his face, his bloodshot eyes aflame, and his steps unsteady.

He hesitated a moment, and then turned the handle of the door. It was locked on the inside, and refused to yield.

He might naturally have expected this; but it served to surprise and exasperate him, for at that moment he was in the mood to fight with his own shadow.

'Ellinor, rouse yourself—I have news for you—news at last!' he exclaimed, and knocked on the door-panels more noisily than respectfully.

But there was no response from within. He applied his ear to the keyhole; there was not a sound to be heard, and, as he had been given to understand that young girls generally slept lightly, it was impossible he could fail to waken her.

He knocked more loudly again, but failed to elicit the slightest response. Then he heard the mocking laugh of Frau Wyburg, who was listening at the foot of the staircase, and, believing that already he was being deluded, a gust of fury seized him, and applying his foot to the door, and as it was old and worm-eaten, he dashed it open with ease, and entered the darkened room.

It was empty, and no cry of alarm or consternation followed his furious irruption into it. The upheld candle showed him in a moment that its occupant was no longer there. Ellinor was gone!

Her bed had been unslept in; her hat and the jacket she had got on board the Flying Foam were lying on it.

Where was she? Where hidden away?

That double villain Wyburg had deceived him after all, was Sir Redmond's instant thought, and, impressed by the rewards offered in the Hamburger Nachtrichten and elsewhere, had 'sold' him and given her up to Mrs. Deroubigne.

Though infuriated with rage and disappointment he became sober in a moment, and turned to confront Wyburg and his wife; and, to do them justice, their astonishment, incredulity, and alarm had not the least appearance of being simulated, but were genuine.

She was concealed from him perhaps in some other apartment.

Frau Wyburg emphatically denied that she was.

'Silence, hag!' exclaimed Sir Redmond; 'had you lived three centuries ago, you would have been burned before the Rathhaus as a witch!'

Her black eyes gleamed dangerously at this injurious remark, and on Sir Redmond turning away to prosecute a search elsewhere in defiance of the palpable evidence that the door had been locked on the inside, and that the key was still in the lock, Herr Wyburg, who was mad with consternation and drinking, roughly barred his way.

On the second finger of his right hand Sir Redmond wore a cluster of diamonds; so prominent and sharp were they that they cut through his tightly-fitting kid glove. These brilliants, as he dealt Wyburg a facer, laid his cheek completely open and nearly tore his left eye out, thus a terrible and most unseemly brawl ensued.

Wyburg was a man of enormous strength, and for whom the enervated baronet was no match in any way. Maddened by pain, the sight of his own blood flowing freely, by absinthe and eau-de-vie, inspirited by revenge and greed together, he resolved to make Sleath a victim now, and, though suffering from what the French call the folie paralytique which the two compounds referred to produce, he was simply savage, yet methodical, in his proceedings.

Rushing upon Sleath like an infuriated bull, he closed with him, and hurling him down the staircase flung him in a heap, bleeding and senseless, at the bottom.

When he recovered, Sleath found himself, secured in an attic of Wyburg's house, a prisoner, bound securely with ropes, stiff, sore, and bruised, his face and shirt front all plastered with blood.

Mr. John Gaiters, all the subsequent day, and indeed the day after, was sorely perplexed by the non-appearance of his master at the Hotel Russie, especially as the yacht of Mr. Dewsnap was now ready for sea.

Frau Wyburg assured him that they had seen nothing of Sir Redmond for several days, and as the young lady had gone he had most probably accompanied her; and with this perplexing intelligence the valet was compelled to content himself.

This story or suggestion seemed to receive a certain corroboration when Gaiters, who was well-nigh at his wit's end, on pursuing his inquiries at Herr Burger's bank in the Gras Keller, where Sir Redmond had letters of credit, found that a cheque, duly signed by him, had been presented there on the preceding day and cashed for a pretty large sum.

Meanwhile, unable to communicate with the external world, Sir Redmond remained, bound hand and foot, a wretched prisoner in the power of the Wyburgs, one of whose first measures was the extortion of the cheque in question as the price of his freedom; but, though the money was duly paid, they still kept him in their hands, being somewhat doubtful whether to release or destroy him.

He knew not whether they had actually betrayed him and given over Ellinor to her sister and chaperone, Mrs. Deroubigne, and in some respects he cared not now. In his innate selfishness of heart, he cursed her bitterly as being in one sense the cause of his present predicament, and he longed with a savage energy to be free that he might turn his back on Hamburg for ever.

He strove with all his strength and energy to burst his bonds, while the veins in his forehead swelled and the perspiration poured over it, but strove, in vain, while Herr Wyburg, with his hideous visage tied up in a blood-stained cloth, sat mockingly in his chair, smoking his meerschaum, and sipping absinthe from time to time out of a green cup-shaped German glass.

The care with which the cheque had been executed and cashed induced Herr Wyburg and his spouse to extort at all risks another, for their greed and cupidity were thoroughly awakened now, and they had the miserable man completely in their power; and the circumstance that the funerals of one or two opulent burgers—one of them actually that of a senator of the city—were taking place, in which the Herr with his battered visage could take no part, and consequently pocket no fees, made him the more resolved on extortion; and, if the worst came to the worst, there were the waters of the Fleethen below the windows of the house.

'You'll never see that girl again unless you sign this other little cheque,' said Frau Wyburg, with grim decision.

'I don't care a doit about the girl; keep her,' replied Sleath through his clenched teeth. 'For God-sake,' he added, imploringly, 'give me something to drink; I am perishing of thirst.'

'Well, perish, then, if you won't sign this paper—it is stamped and ready; but, till you sign it or die, the water remains in this flagon,' replied Wyburg, placing a tall German beer-jug full of sparkling water in tantalising proximity to the wretched man's lips, and then putting it on the table, while madame looked on approvingly, her black eyes gleaming, her pale face radiant with malice and greed, her jaw looking more square, and her tiger mouth more tigerish than ever.

Somehow the words of Wyburg seemed to introduce a practical and reasonable, if intensely obnoxious, element into what seemed the phantasmal horror of a prolonged nightmare to Sir Redmond Sleath.

'What is the sum?' he asked, huskily.

'Three hundred pounds English money.'

He groaned with rage at this renewed extortion; but, if money is precious, life is more precious still, and these Wyburgs he knew to be wretches without an atom of scruple, so he signed the cheque, which the Herr, who knew his autograph perfectly well, folded and handed to his better-half with a smile of grim satisfaction.

'Unbind me now,' said Sleath, faintly.

'Not if I know it, yet awhile,' replied the ruffian, who, though he acted so methodically, was half mad with revenge for his gashed visage, and the imbibing of absinthe and Danish corn-brandy.

'What are you about to do with me?' asked Sleath, imploringly, and with mortal fear in his face and accents.

Wyburg made no reply, but proceeded with great deliberation to bore two holes in the wainscot of the attic, and, passing through them the ends of the ropes which bound his prisoner, told him that they were being secured by the Frau to a little cask of powder on the other side of the partition, and inserted in which there was a loaded and cocked revolver, and that the instant he moved or attempted pursuit or flight the tension of the ropes would cause an explosion that would blow him and the house to pieces!

Herr Wyburg had made that which to him was a small fortune out of Sir Redmond, and dared not face any inquiry in case of that individual escaping and appealing to law; he was far in arrear with his house rent; he had sold his furniture twice over to different Jews in the Scharsteinweg, and now resolved to quit Hamburg for purer air; and, inspired by malice and revenge, he and his wife took their immediate departure, leaving the wretched Sleath minus watch, purse, and rings, and, as we have described, face to face with a miserable death, if he attempted to escape!

CHAPTER XIII.

WITH ROBERTS' COLUMN.

'Welcome back from the other world, Bob Wodrow!' exclaimed Toby Chace. 'The stable-call won't be new to you, though a good meal and a deep drink may be, I have no doubt. So we are to have a shy at these Afghan beggars again!' and while grooming his horse he began to sing the stable-call in verse, while rubbing down his charger after hissing away through his teeth in the most orthodox fashion,

'Come, come to your stable as quick as you're able,
Come, come to your stable, my jolly dragoon;
See your horse groomed well, and give him some hay,
With corn and water for night and for day;
Then come to your stable as fast as you're able,
Then come to your stable, my jolly dragoon.'

So sang to Wodrow that jovial English trooper, Toby Chace, light of heart, if unsteady of purpose, while bustling about his horse—Chace, who, in his more palmy days, had more than one hunter of his own in stall; who had once handsome rooms in Piccadilly, a snug corner in his club, and was never without an invitation for cub-hunting in the shires, or to pot the deer in the Highlands; the heir to an old English baronetcy, and yet, in his fallen estate, was wont to designate himself 'jolly as a sandboy, whatever the devil kind of boy that is!'

Left behind his regiment sick, Toby Chace was now, like Robert Wodrow, attached pro tem. to a squadron of the 9th Lancers ordered to the front.

'So we march to-morrow to clear off the score we owe these fellows at Cabul,' said he.

'In that business, then, I have lost the best friend man ever had,' said Wodrow, sighing; 'Captain Colville.'

'A right good sort; we'll drink his health—his memory, I mean. I wonder if Fred Roberts will let us sack the town?'

'I think not, Toby—but why?'

'It would be rare fun prying into the harems, or having them escaladed by reprobates in regimentals.'

Toby's naturally elastic spirits rose at the prospect of more fighting, for his disposition was always to make the best of everything, and it served him in good stead now.

Ignorant of all that was transpiring to those most dear to him far away in Europe, Colville was still a prisoner in the hands of Mahmoud Shah.

The cruel and barbarous murder of the young and gallant Hector Maclain, after he had been so many weeks the prisoner and guest of Ayoub Khan, proved that our Afghan enemies could be true or false to their salt, exactly as suited their caprice or cruelty; thus, though Leslie Colville was in precisely the same position in the Cabul fort, it by no means followed that his life might not be taken in any moment of fear or hatred.

Life in India has often been described as one long and listless yawn, born of weariness, heat, and indolence; but it was certainly not so at this crisis on the borders of Afghanistan, which, to the average British mind, is considered a part of India.

An army was now detailed to punish the infatuated fanatics who had destroyed our Embassy, but, though infatuated, they were also

'Souls made of fire and children of the sun,
With whom revenge is virtue!'

So we now resolved to take a leaf out of their own book, and have our revenge in turn.

Once more our troops would have to toil along the stony and boulder-strewn banks of the gloomy Khyber, up and down the awful chasms of the Lundi Khana Kotal, by the mountain clefts and deep defiles of Khoord Cabul, with every prospect of being harassed, perhaps decimated, by thousands of hardy hillmen—the Khyberees, Afreedees, Shinwarris, Mohmonds, Mongols, and Ghilzies.

The gallant and active Sir Donald Stewart again seized Candahar; Massey occupied the Shutargardan Pass; Baker took Kushi, and Roberts—whose name is second to none in glory—was soon ready to begin that campaign which all hoped would end in the conquest of the blood-stained Cabul.

The Viceroy of India made the greatest efforts to grapple with the new difficulty, and hurry forward the army that was to uphold the power of the fickle Ameer as our nominal ally—for nominal indeed he was—and there was every prospect of his being slain by his insurgent troops, led by Mahmoud Shah and other sirdirs, unless he took to flight, or put himself at their head against us as intruders and unbelievers.

'This devil of an Ameer,' remarked old Colonel Spatterdash, 'is true to the words of Swift—"The two maxims of every great man are always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word."

Three columns were to advance simultaneously, and open communication between Cabul and Peshawur, but we shall confine ourselves briefly to that under Sir Frederick Roberts, which consisted of three batteries of Artillery, a squadron of H.M. 9th Lancers, some Bengal and Punjaub Cavalry, the Gordon and Albany Highlanders, the 67th Regiment, 3rd Sikhs, 23rd Pioneers, and Spatterdash's Punjaubees—making a total of barely eight thousand men.

Scarlet, blue, and gold, had for the time been discarded by the cavalry, and, like most of the infantry, they wore karkee, or mud-coloured costumes—uniforms they could scarcely be called—with the inevitable tropical helmet, and putties or linen leg bandages. The Scottish infantry, however, retained their tartans, wearing respectively the green Gordon and red Royal Stuart; but the Lancers laid aside their scarlet and white bannerettes.

The 19th of September saw our advanced parties reconnoitering close to Kushi, within thirty-five miles of Cabul, where twelve strong battalions with many guns were reported to be in garrison; and on that night the Duke of Albany's Highlanders were suddenly fired into, when all was supposed to be quiet in the vicinity, and a group of officers were chatting and smoking round a wood fire, which was instantly scattered and extinguished that the enemy might have nothing to aim by.

The Highland pickets stood to their arms, and by a few half-random volleys swept away the assailants, who proved to be Ghazis or religious fanatics, armed with juzails, or long matchlock guns, with a forked rest, which enables the marksman to take a steady aim. They are formidable weapons in mountainous districts, and, though their range exceeded that of old 'brown Bess,' it is far inferior to that of the rifles now in use.

Three days after, the Mongols attacked a convoy of provisions, borne on mules, in a solitary pass, and killed about twenty-three of the escort, chiefly by knives, and resistance proved useless, as the mountain band was so numerous that they next attempted to storm a tower at the summit of the Sirkai Kotal, or Red Pass, so named from the peculiar colour of the narrow path which led to it, but were repulsed and finally driven off by two companies of the Albany Highlanders. But skirmishes such as these were now of daily occurrence.

A few days after saw General Baker, C.B. and V.C., with the brigade of cavalry at Kushi (or 'the Village of Delights'), in a very barren district, whence, however, could be seen the lovely Logur Valley—fresh, green, and fertile; and then he pushed his patrols and reconnaisances along the Cabul Road towards Zargun Shahr.

The advanced camp at Kushi received some very unexpected guests on the 23rd of September, when, at the head of twenty-five splendidly clad and accoutred horsemen—including old Daud Shah—the Ameer Yakoub Khan rode in and surrendered himself!

'I have no longer any power left,' said he; 'I have been dethroned by my own mutinous troops; but Inshallah! it is the will of God!'

'What his true reason for this startling step may have been, we never knew,' wrote an officer, 'certainly not the one he gave, for no Afghan ever told the truth intentionally.'

Handsome tents were given to him and his suite, and a guard of honour, furnished by the Gordon Highlanders, was accorded him. Next day General Roberts and his staff rode in amid the cheers of the troops, and every face brightened, as all knew that the stern work of vengeance was soon to begin, and the pitiful slaughter of the gallant Cavagnari and his companions would be atoned for.

Stolidly proud or stupidly unimpassionable, the Ameer did not condescend to leave his tent, but lounged on a silken divan in the doorway of it, with a lorgnette in his hands, and evinced no excitement till he heard the pipes of the Gordon Highlanders, and saw the kilted sentinels around him.

'He is a man of about six or seven and thirty,' says Major Mitford, of the 14th Bengal Lancers, in his narrative, 'with a light almond complexion and a very long, hooked nose, the lower part of the face hidden by a black beard and a moustache, the eyes having a dazed expression like those of a freshly caught seal. This is said to have been caused by the five years' confinement in a dark cell to which his father, Shere Ali, subjected him, for conspiring against him.'

By order of the Viceroy, Sir Frederick Roberts issued a manifesto to the Afghan people to the effect that the British troops were advancing on the capital to avenge the treachery of its armed inhabitants, but that all who were peaceful would be unmolested; and non-combatants, women, and children were advised to leave Cabul and betake themselves to places of safety.

After some necessary interviews or consultations with the dethroned and fugitive Ameer, General Roberts concentrated his whole force at Kushi prior to attacking the city or any force it might send into the field against him.

Meanwhile the so-called guard of honour furnished by the Gordon Highlanders kept a close watch over Yakoub Khan, as all in camp mistrusted him, and believed that he only made a pretence of giving himself up, and had in reality come to spy our numbers and weak points.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE BATTLE OF CHARASIAH.

That something was on the tapis, and something like preparation, and very like consternation too, existed in and about Cabul, became evident to Leslie Colville, who suspected, though he was ignorant of the truth, that it was caused by the advance of a British army.

From the square keep of Mahmoud Shah's fort he could see mounted scouts and regular cavalry patrols hourly scouring the road, while crowds of Ghilzies and other hillmen, with banners waving and arms glittering, hovered on the mountain sides; caravans of camels laden with stores from Ghuznee, Bamian, Parwan, and elsewhere in the rear passed daily into the gates of Cabul, and more than one train of cannon too.

All this he saw, but made no comment, and he asked no questions; he was only glad and thankful to heaven when night fell or day dawned, that another twelve hours of durance were passed, and that he was still in the land of the living, or not, perhaps, sold as a slave to the Beloochees or Usbeg Tartars, till one morning, about an hour or more before dawn, Mahmoud roused him from the charpoy on which he slept, and curtly told him that he must come forth.

Leslie Colville's heart beat painfully, and his thoughts flashed home to Mary Wellwood. Was death—such a murderous death as that by which Maclain died—about to be meted out to him after all?

He was without arms—helpless; nor would arms have availed him much in that tower, garrisoned as it was by the fanatical cut-throats of Mahmoud Shah, whom he followed into the court, where two horses saddled and ready for the road were standing.

'Mount,' said Mahmoud; 'mount and come with me, while the morning is yet dark—we have not a moment to lose.'

They quitted the tower by its western gate, and took together at a hard gallop the road that led, as Colville knew by past experience, along the left bank of the Cabul river, and, leaving all the scattered forts, walled gardens, and orchards behind, runs by Khoord Cabul and the Suffaidh Sang towards the Shutargardan Pass; and now for the first time genuine hope began to dawn in his heart.

'Hark!' cried Mahmoud; 'what sound is that?'

'A British trumpet call,' replied Colville.

'Yes—and look!' said his guide, whom Colville now perceived was clad completely in spotless white, the costume of a Ghazi, assumed by those Moslem fanatics who devote themselves to death in battle for their Faith, and to achieving the death of all unbelievers.

Day was breaking now, and already the snow-clad peaks of some of those hills which are above eleven thousand feet in height, tipped with rosy dawn as with fire, stood sharply up against the deep blue sky, and, after a ten miles' ride from the vicinity of the city, Mahmoud Shah drew his reins, and again said, 'Look!'

Then Colville could see the gleam of arms in the distance, and as the gleam was steady he knew it was a sign of troops advancing.

'Your people are there,' said Mahmoud; 'join them, but keep out of my way for the future, and tempt me no more; for never again, had we eaten a peck of salt together, will I spare the life of an unbeliever; I have sworn it by the ninety-nine holy attributes and the Black Stone of Mecca! Go—and go with God, though Eblis is more powerful yonder. There are the unbelievers who say the blessed Koran is a lie, and who seek to turn us aside from the gods our fathers worshipped, and of whom it was written on that Night of Power, when the word came down from Heaven, they shall taste the fires of hell, which like molten metal will devour their entrails!'

His dark eyes flashed as he spoke, and he ground his set teeth in the fury of his fanaticism.

'Allah Shookr!' he exclaimed, and, without waiting for a single word of thanks from Colville, wheeled his horse sharply round, and galloped away towards the distant city at full speed; and a picturesque figure he looked, in his snowy camise and loose mantle, his long, white loonghee floating in the morning breeze, his juzail slung across his back, and the head of his tall, tasselled lance gleaming in the sunshine.

Colville devoutly hoped they would never meet again; yet he had not seen quite the last of Mahmoud Shah.

He now rode joyfully on towards the two parties of British cavalry which were then in sight, and who were—though he knew it not—about to inaugurate those operations which brought on the battle of Charasiah—or 'The Four Water Mills,' a spot about twelve British miles from Cabul.

The troops of Roberts had encamped there for the night, after passing through the picturesque defile called the Sung-i-Navishta. All the vicinity had been scoured by our cavalry patrols, and, little aware that they were on the eve of a bloody engagement, the soldiers, weary with a long day's march, had turned in early.

Daybreak on this eventful day saw two cavalry patrols pushing along the roads that lead from Charasiah to Cabul. Captain Neville, of the 14th Bengal Lancers, with twenty men of that corps, took that one which, after crossing the Chardeh Valley, enters the south-western suburbs of the city, while the southern road, leading through the Sung-i-Navishta, was taken by Captain Apperley, with twenty of the 9th Lancers, and Robert Wodrow, as he had so recently trod the ways there on foot, now rode with him as a guide.

At nine a.m., a puff of smoke came suddenly from the loopholed-wall of a village, and Wodrow's horse fell under him, killed by a musket ball. Apperley reported that he had occupied another village, and was now hard pressed by the enemy, on which a field-officer and twenty more Lancers came on to his succour, while some native infantry went at the double in the direction of Captain Neville's party.

Robert Wodrow was in the act of getting his carbine unstrapped from his dead horse when a mounted man suddenly came upon him clad in a sorely frayed and tattered blue patrol jacket, and wearing on his head a scarlet Afghan loonghee, and great was his astonishment and noisy and genuine his joy on discovering that this solitary and unarmed rider was Leslie Colville, whom he had long since numbered with the slain among the ashes of the Residency.

They shook hands again and again warmly. Each had a hundred questions to ask the other, but both had little information to give, as Colville had been mewed up in Mahmoud's fort since the day of the massacre, and no tidings from home in any way or of any kind had reached Robert Wodrow.

'And now, without a moment's delay, I must report myself at headquarters,' said Colville.

'The General and staff are as yet some miles in the rear, sir,' replied Wodrow, recalled by the remark to their relative positions, 'and I shall guide you. By the carbine and musketry fire in front our two cavalry patrols seem, to be catching it, and I must somehow get another horse. We have plenty of time. The infantry have yet some miles to come!'

Wodrow seemed now alternately in very sad or in the wildest spirits. With Colville's presence, his voice and kindly face, the young fellow's thoughts and memories went keenly and vividly back to the past time at Birkwoodbrae, to the manse of Kirktoun-Mailler, and all the old associations of Ellinor Wellwood and his home.

Then, indeed, he forgot for a time that he was only a corporal of Hussars, as Colville did that he was an officer of the Guards, and they chummed like old friends together.

'Share with me the contents of my haversack and flask, Captain Colville,' said Robert Wodrow, as they sat for a few minutes by the banks of a wayside runnel. 'We are going into action again—that is pretty evident. "Few, few shall part where many meet"—you know what the poet says; and I care little if it be my chance to fall—after all—after all I have undergone.'

'Don't say so, Wodrow,' said Colville, in a tone of reprehension. 'Why the deuce are you so low in spirit now?'

'I should not be, now that I have met you again, Captain Colville,' replied Wodrow, as he received back his flask and took a long pull at it; 'but I feel—I feel—I don't know how to-day. It is not fear, but as if something was about to happen to me; and a song—a song that she—Ellinor—used to sing seems to haunt my memory now.'

'What song? "The Birks of Invermay"?'

'No—another, and at this moment her very voice seems in my ears,' he said, in broken accent.

'And this song of Ellinor's——'

'Ran thus,' said Wodrow, and, with a low voice and a certain humidity in his eyes, he actually sang a now forgotten song—

'Thy way along life's bright path lies,
    Where flowers spring up before thee,
And faithful hearts and loving eyes
    Assemble to adore thee.
The great and wise bend at thy shrine,
    The fair and young pursue thee,
Fame's chaplets round thy temples twine,
    And pleasure smiles to woo thee.

'Yet, 'mid each blessing time can bring,
    Thy breast is still repining;
'Tis cold as Ammon's icy spring,
    O'er which no sun is shining;
And friendship's presence has no charm—
    And beauty's smiles are blighted,
Nor joy, nor fame the heart can warm,
    That early love has slighted.'

'And blighted has mine been, as you know, Captain Colville,' he added, more sadly than bitterly.

'Come, Wodrow, don't pose as a "blighted being," any way,' said the other, who saw with pain the emotion of his comrade, and feared it sprang from one not unfrequently met with on service, the presentiment of coming death. 'Here comes a Hussar on the spur from the front.'

'Toby Chace!' exclaimed Wodrow, as that individual came powdering along the road, but reined up sharply for a moment or so. 'Whither so fast?'

'I am sent back to report that the enemy in great force are advancing from the direction of the city, and occupying the defile and range of hills between this and Cabul, completely barring our advance. The Ghilzies are all mustering, and the road to Zahidabad, where the fifth division has encamped, is threatened.'

'That is the road by which General Macpherson is advancing with a great convoy of stores and ammunition.'

'Yes—so no doubt we shall have to carry the heights before evening.'

Toby Chace now recognised that Colville was an officer, though in somewhat dilapidated garments, and saluted him, colouring deeply, almost painfully, as he did so.

'My comrade, Toby Chace, Captain Colville,' said Wodrow; 'he is like myself, a reduced gentleman, and will die, I hope, a baronet.'

'I am not in a hurry about that,' said Toby, and, as Colville bowed to him, he saluted again, and proffered his brandy-flask, a silver hunting one, on which a coat of arms was engraved—a relic of better days at Melton and elsewhere. 'I have only a ration biscuit to offer you, sir,' said Toby, laughing; 'but once into Cabul, we shall have luxuries galore—cotelettes de mouton à l'Ameer—mutton chops and green chillis. And now to deliver my report!' he added, and, putting spurs to his horse, rode off in the direction of Kushi, while Colville and Robert Wodrow followed him as fast as they could. There was no time to be lost now, as the events of the day were rapidly developing themselves.

Colville reported himself to General Baker (whose brigade was coming on), and joined that officer's staff, on procuring arms, while Wodrow bade him farewell, and joined the squadron of Lancers to which he was attached.

Captain Apperley's command of the latter he had now dismounted, and posted in a shallow ditch that surrounded a square mud fort, in which he placed the chargers. A range of steep hills rose in front of this improvised post, and through them lay the Sung-i-Navishta Pass—which means the 'Place of the Written Stone,' from an ancient Persian inscription carved on a mass of rock in the centre of the defile, stating that the road then had been made in the reign of Shah Jehan, who was crowned at Agra in 1628.

Hills, steep, barren, and stony, were on the left of this post, and there were grey garden walls, from which the Afghans were firing briskly, but as most of their balls went into the air, it was evident that they were ignorant of how to sight the rifles they were handling.

A small party of the 12th Bengal Cavalry dismounted, held a walled garden on the right of this post, and kept up a rattling carbine fire on the enemy, who took cover among ground so rough and broken that no cavalry in the saddle could act against them.

To succour these advanced parties, whose posts were now enveloped in whirls of eddying smoke, streaked by incessant jets or flashes of fire, the Royal Artillery guns came on under Major Parry, with a wing of the Gordon Highlanders under Major Stewart White, with some of the 23rd Pioneers and two squadrons of the 5th Punjaub Cavalry, all sent by General Baker, who assigned to this mixed but slender force the severe task of carrying these garrisoned heights.

Old Spatterdash as he went to the front had just time to wring Colville's hand and congratulate him, but in doing so reeled a little in his saddle. In fact, at that early hour he was still groggy from his potations over night, and said, in a feathery voice,

'S'cuse me, Colville, but that infernal bullet I got at Lucknow is troubling me as usual.'

A few minutes more saw Spatterdash lying on his back, shot through the head, and a riderless horse galloping rearward with loose reins, while very heavy firing on the left announced that Baker was pushing on towards the hills, and all along their green slopes could be seen the white smoke of cannon and rifles eddying and rolling before the soft morning breeze.

As Major White pushed on with his somewhat mixed command, Colville could see the rocky heights on both flanks of the Sung-i-Navishta Pass manned by dark masses of the enemy, all ranked under numerous standards that streamed in the breeze, red, blue, green, white, and yellow, the colours of the different mountain tribes, or of the fortified villages from which they came.

There, too, were the sombre battalions of the Ameer's revolted infantry, clad in brown tunics faced with scarlet; and, most conspicuous of all, were a horde of Ghazis, furious and inflamed fanatics, in purest white, led by several chiefs, but most notably by Mahmoud Shah.

Parry's battery now opened fire on the crowds that covered the nearest hill, and, while yells of defiance mingled with the din of the guns and musketry, four Afghan rifled mountain guns in the Pass replied, making very good practice against us indeed, and waking the echoes of the rocks that overhang the Logur river.

'Let the guns continue to advance, and pound the nearest hill where these fellows with the standards are,' said Major White, adding proudly and confidently, 'With my Highlanders alone I shall sweep the enemy from those hills on our right.'

Parry then advanced his guns to within fifteen hundred yards, and again opened fire. His cavalry escort was commanded by Major Mitford, who says, 'We had thus leisure to watch the advance of the 92nd, which was a splendid sight. The dark green kilts went up the steep rocky hillside at a fine rate, though one would occasionally drop, and roll several feet down the slope, showing that the rattling fire kept up by the enemy was not all display. Both sides took advantage of every atom of cover, but still the gallant kilts pressed on and up, and it was altogether as pretty a piece of light infantry drill as could be seen.'

Meanwhile Parry's guns were sending shell after shell with beautiful precision to the crest of the hill he was ordered 'to pound.' They exploded with dreadful effect whenever and wherever the enemy could be seen preparing to charge. The Ghazis and Ghilzies lay over each other in heaps, torn, mangled, and disembowelled, and the white robes of the former were seen to be splashed and stained with blood; but still the living yelled and brandished their swords and standards, and by four p.m., Parry's guns had completely silenced the four that had been thundering in the echoing pass.

And now it was that the gallant commander of 'the Gay Gordons,' who were still advancing, won his Victoria Cross, as he stormed the crowded hills in person. 'Advancing with two companies of his regiment,' says the London Gazette, 'he came upon a body of the enemy, strongly posted, and outnumbering his force by eighteen to one. His men being much exhausted, and immediate action necessary, Major White took a rifle, and going on by himself, shot the leader of the enemy.'

The fall of this personage, who was deemed invulnerable, so intimidated the enemy that they fled down the mountain side, while the Highlanders crowned its crest with a ringing cheer, and then, plunging with their bayonets into the dark defile of the Sung-i-Navishta, they captured the four mountain guns, the horses of which lay disembowelled, dead, or dying in the limber traces. So swift was the rush of the Gordon Highlanders that they had only nine casualties at this point.

With the Albany Highlanders in the van, General Baker pushed along the road towards Chardeh, the 5th Ghoorkas, 5th Punjaubees, and 23rd Pioneers following them, till the whole were opposed on strong and precipitous ground by four thousand Afghans ranged under six large and brightly-coloured standards.

Upward and onward went our troops under a withering rifle fire, the echoes of which reverberated a hundredfold among the hills, as they were tossed back from peak to peak. For two hours the fight went on, our troops loading and firing with great coolness and deliberation; and then was seen the fearful triumph of the breechloading weapon of precision when properly sighted, for each successive row of swarthy men, as they crowned the ridges of rock, was mown down by a deadly fire, as wheat goes prone to the earth before the scythe of the mower, till after a time it seemed that scarcely a man stood up alive after the delivery of these thundering tempests of lead.

The deadly Gatling guns (the pepper castors, as the soldiers named them) proved of little use, owing to the acute angle of elevation; but at last the heights were taken in rear by a flank movement of the Gordon Highlanders, who, with colours flying and all their pipes playing, came storming up the steep slopes, and, crowning the summits, swept the enemy away, or all that remained of them.

By four o'clock the Afghans were everywhere in full flight to Cabul, with the loss of many colours, twenty pieces of cannon, and a host of killed and wounded.

Strong pickets were posted for the night, as the Ghilzies and Mahmoud Shah's Ghazis were hovering about. The troops bivouacked, as the tents and baggage were all packed for the advance to Cabul on the morrow.

During all the events of this most exciting day, by the difference of their rank and duties, Colville had, of course, seen nothing of Robert Wodrow, and feared that his presentiment had been fulfilled, till he heard from one of the staff what the general had recorded in the last paragraph of his despatch—a paragraph that excited utter bewilderment, and joy too, in the hearts of some that were far away, and had heard nothing of the absent one since the terrible catastrophe in the Cabul river:—

'Corporal Robert Wodrow, of the 10th Hussars (doing duty with the squadron of H.M. 9th Lancers), having carried a message for me, on the spur, through a most disastrous fire, after two aides-de-camp and an orderly officer had fallen wounded successively in attempting this perilous duty, I have the honour to recommend him for a commission in the infantry, and also for the Victoria Cross.'

After they had read this, his old parents, as they looked from the manse windows of Kirktoun-Mailler, knew why their kindly parish folk lit that huge bonfire which they then saw blazing on the summit of Craigmhor.

With hearts that were very full the kindly old couple stood hand clasped in hand, as when he had first won her girlish love among the 'siller' Birks of Invermay, and, though they were very silent now, their souls were filled with prayer and prayerful thoughts.

CHAPTER XV.

ENOUGH DONE FOR HONOUR.

The morning of the day after the battle of Charasiah saw the cavalry all in their saddles for an early movement. The dead had not been buried as yet,

And their executors, the knavish crows,
Flew o'er them, impatient for their hour,

when about five o'clock, in a cold and bitter wind, Colville was sent with instructions for the Lancers and Bengal cavalry to move off.

They did so at a rapid pace, and entering a narrow part of the Sung-i-Navishta pass, pursued a winding and stony road where the deep Logur stream flows between rocks and slabs of granite, and there seized a number of guns and brought them into camp.

Though Cabul had been abandoned by the insurrectionary troops, whom the results of Charasiah had stricken with terror, a considerable body of fresh Afghan forces, who had returned from Kohistan, had formed an entrenched position on a high hill which overlooks the Bala Hissar, and to dislodge them was necessary before entering the city; so, with eight squadrons of horse, General Massy swept round it northward to watch the roads that led to Bamian and Kohistan, while General Baker made a direct attack in front.

During the events of the day Leslie Colville had been conscious of a blow on his left shoulder, received in a skirmish, and believed it to be inflicted by some soldier in swinging his musket about. But it proved to be a juzail ball, almost spent, and lodged in the flesh, out of which it was cut by Robert Wodrow, who bathed and dressed the wound for him.

The enemy failed to meet Massy and fled in the night, abandoning their camp and twelve pieces of cannon; and under Massy and Colonel Gough the cavalry went in pursuit, through that difficult ground which lies in the vicinity of Cabul, and is encumbered by isolated forts like that of Mahmoud Shah, and loopholed garden and orchard walls, all affording sure cover for skirmishers.

To keep as far as possible from these the cavalry rode by the way of the Siah Sung, or Black Rock. As they proceeded, on their left rose the grand and picturesque masses of the Bala Hissar, towers joined by curtains rising above each other in succession, round, square, and octagon, all crenelated, and glowing in the red radiance of the morning sun, where not sunk in shadow. Loftily these masses rose above even the smoke of the great city, the background of all being the ridgy crest of the Tukt-i-Shah, or Emperor's seat, and the great rocks of Asmai, on which hordes of the enemy were gathered.

The heights there are precipitous, a thousand feet above the valley of Cabul, and there the dark figures of the Afghans, with their arms glittering in the sunshine, could be seen, clustering thick as a swarm of bees against the grey granite of the cliffs, up the eastern flank of which our infantry, with the Highlanders as usual in the van, were now creeping with some light mountain guns.

When the shells of the latter began to explode among the Afghans they raised yells of derision, waved their standards, and danced like madmen; and, heavy though the cannonade, they manifested no design of abandoning the heights of Asmai.

Leaving two squadrons of the 12th and 14th Bengal Regiments to watch their movements, General Baker led the rest of the cavalry brigade into the plain of Chardeh—where a clear and beautiful stream flows—and then the horses were watered, while the din of cannon and musketry showed that the attack and defence of Asmai were proceeding.

Baker now rode on to watch a camp that had been formed at a village round Deh Muzang, en route to which his native guides abandoned him, but were overtaken and shot on the spot. The whole district was now encumbered by half-dispersed hordes of the enemy, which, as the cavalry overtook them, resisted more or less, and after the sun set the duty became full of peril in unknown ground. Thus, when darkness fell, many of the dragoons went astray; some fell into ambuscades, and several were killed or wounded before the villages in the Plain of Chardeh, where they were to bivouac for the night, were reached.

Among the latter who suffered was Wodrow's reckless and light-hearted comrade, Toby Chace, whom, when Leslie Colville came up with Baker's staff, he found dying of a dreadful tulwar wound, inflicted in combat against great odds after his horse had been shot under him.

This was just outside the village named Killa Kazi, which was surrounded by a very high loop-holed wall, within which the native cavalry had dismounted for the night, each trooper lying beside his horse.

Toby's wound had been given by one dreadful slash, and extended from the chest to the thighs, laying the body so completely open, that water as he drank it from Robert Wodrow's wooden bottle, actually trickled from his viscera, yet he was wonderfully composed, and by his own medical skill Wodrow, who supported Toby's head, knew that it was all over with him.

'Ah, Bob, I'll be gone in a brace of shakes,' said he, speaking slowly at long intervals, and while his teeth chattered with agony and the dew of death glittered on his forehead in the bright moonlight; 'the folks in England, who live at home at ease, know nothing of this sort of thing, thank God! Take my silver flask, Bob, and keep it—keep it in memory of poor Toby Chace. It is all I have now worth offering you. A girl gave it to me in—in happier times at Ascot, one whose shoes I was not worthy to tie—but she married another fellow anyhow.'

After this his voice died away, his senses seemed to wander, and whispering, with a sudden tenderness of manner, 'Mother, kiss me,' he turned his face to the right and ceased to live.

After a time Robert Wodrow, carefully and tenderly as a brother would have done, rolled the dead hussar in a horse-rug and buried him under one of the tall poplar-trees that shade the village wall, and there he was left in his lonely grave, when next morning the cavalry rode off: for a reconnaisance.

So narrow were the paths they had to pursue that they proceeded in single files till they struck on the great road to Ghuznee and swept along it at a gallop, finding at every pace of the way abandoned tents, baggage, cooking utensils, and dying Cabul ponies—the abandoned spoil of the Kohistanies, Ghilzies, Logaris, and others who had come to fight the British, but had lost heart and fled.

Four days afterwards Leslie Colville found himself entering Cabul, when Sir Frederick Roberts rode into it publicly, accompanied by the son of the Ameer, for Yakoub Khan, imbrued as his hands were with the blood of the Embassy, and inculpated with the actors in its destruction, was too cunning to accompany the British forces, at the head of whom rode the squadron of the 9th Royal Lancers.

Possession of Cabul was now taken in the name of Queen Victoria. The royal standard was hoisted on the Bala Hissar; our Horse Artillery guns thundered forth a salute, and three ringing British cheers rang along the ranks for the Empress of India.

The punishment of the perpetrators of the outrage at the Residency, the terrible explosion at the Bala Hissar, and the fighting that ensued at the Shutargardan Pass and the Sirkai Kotal, lie somewhat apart from our narrative; but we cannot omit that which ensued at the Khoord Cabul and other defiles.

On the 7th of the month after the capital was taken, Macpherson's Flying Column marched down the savage valley, clearing it of straggling bands of the enemy, from the tomb of Baba Issah to the banks of the Cabul river, but not without a sharp fight at the former place, where Mahmoud Shah and a band of select and most desperate Ghazis had taken post and resisted to the last, courting that death in battle to which they had vowed and devoted themselves.