Only an Ensign: A Tale of the Retreat from Cabul, Volume 3 (of 3)

CHAPTER XIV.

WITH SALE'S BRIGADE.

Since that ill-omened hour and time of dread excitement, when on the disastrous day in January the ladies and other hostages were handed over to Ackbar Khan, their friends and relatives even in Afghanistan knew nothing of their actual safety—who were living, who were dead, or who were mutilated or disgraced by insults worse than death, on the route towards Toorkistan; and now the beginning of September had come.

It was only known that Ackbar's orders to Saleh Mohammed were, "to hurry them on their journey, and to butcher all the sick, and those for whom there might be no speedy conveyance."

Eight months—eight weary and harassing months of eager longing, of fierce excitement, and impatience to avenge the fallen and rescue the helpless—had passed ere the junction between General Pollock's troops and those of Sir Robert Sale was fully effected, and the advance upon Cabul, so long resolved upon, was once more begun, while Nott was pushing victoriously from Candahar on the same point, leaving Ghuznee in smoking ruins behind him.

To Waller's mind, Mabel, though an ever-prevailing thought, had become a kind of myth by that time—existent, yet non-existent, for separation was a species of living death; and he could but pray that she was still living, though in the hands of Ackbar Khan. So a sad memory to many a husband was the face of his wife; so to many a father were the voice and smile of his child; and all knew that on their own swords, and the valour and resolution of their comrades, depended the chance of their all being ever reunited again.

Waller looked older than he was wont to do—older than his years; for he had become, like many others serving there, more grave and more thoughtful now. Fun and merriment were unknown in Pollock's army, and laughter, like many another luxury, was as scarce. With haversacks, canteens, and purses empty, and hard fighting in front, life looks far from rosy. Waller had more than once detected a most decided and long grey hair in his carefully cultivated whiskers. A grey hair!—when improvising the back of his hunting-watch as a mirror: his own elaborate rosewood dressing-case, with silver-mounted essence bottles—the parting gift of a rich aunt, from whom Bob had "expectations," was now degraded to the duty of holding cooking-spices and stuffs for pillaus and kabobs in the kitchen of a Khan; but the grey hairs—once upon a time he should have twitched them out.

"Bah! what do they matter now?" said he, and finished his toilet by clasping on his waist-belt.

Waller felt more than ever, from personal causes, inspired by an ardour in the performance of his duty, and speedily became distinguished as one of the most active and gallant officers on the staff of Sir Robert Sale, a veteran whose uninterrupted career of service dated back to the battle of Malavelly, where Harris defeated Tippoo Saib, and the storming of Seringapatam, in the closing year of the preceding century. Sale commanded one division in our Army of Vengeance,—for such it deemed itself; General M'Caskill, a stern and resolute Scotsman, led the other; and the whole under General Pollock, on being reinforced by Her Majesty 31st, the 33rd Native Light Infantry, the 1st Light Cavalry, all clad in silver grey, and a train of mountain guns (the ghalondazees of which wore picturesque oriental dresses), commenced the march towards the mighty range of mountains that lie between Jellalabad and Cabul.

McCaskill was in such feeble health that the brave old fellow had to proceed at the head of his division in a litter borne by four Hindoos.

Experience had taught our leaders the mistake of having the usual mighty encumbrances of camp-followers, the tenting and feeding of which formed the curse of our Indian armies; so, in this instance, such appendages were greatly reduced. For tents, the palls or little marquees of the sepoys were substituted. Save a single change of linen, the soldiers carried nothing in their knapsacks; the baggage of the officers was cut down to the smallest extent—Waller carried his in a valise at his saddle—and three or four had to sleep under one marquee. All the sick and wounded were left under a guard in Jellalabad; and thus the army was trimmed, pruned, and fined down to the active, well-armed, and lightly accoutred fighting-men alone.

Hence the camp had no longer the aspect usually presented by those of our Indian forces, as these usually exhibit a motley collection of coverings, to ward off the baleful dews of night or the scorching sun by day. Here and there a superb suite of tents or marquees, surrounded by squalid little erections of coloured calico, tattered cloths and blankets stretched over sticks and poles, even palm leaves being improvised when they could be had; and amid all these congeries of variously coloured masses, the flags of chiefs and colonels, the bells of arms, horses, oxen, camels, and elephants, pell mell!

A final act of individual cruelty, perpetrated by Ackbar Khan on a poor Hindoo—the same schroff, or banker, whom Mabel had seen in Cabul—greatly exasperated all ranks against him.

Hearing that our troops had begun their march, this man, whose nationality and sympathies led him to favour their interests, when making his way towards them, was overtaken, and brought before Ackbar in the castle of Buddeeabad, and was there bitterly upbraided as a traitor.

"Throw him down," he cried to his Haozir-bashes, and then drew his sabre.

Believing he was about to be beheaded, the wretched Hindoo implored mercy.

"Hold him fast," said Ackbar, baring his right arm to the elbow. "What, dog of an idolater, you wish to see the Feringhees, do you?"

By two blows of his heavy sabre, which was inscribed by a verse from the Koran, he hacked off the feet of the Hindoo above the ankles, and said mockingly—

"Now you may go where you will: throw him out of doors."

Cast forth, faint and bleeding, the poor wretch, tore his turban-cloth into strips and staunched with them the hemorrhage, enabling him actually to crawl on his hands and knees to our outposts, where his appearance excited the bitterest feelings in the breasts of all the troops, European as well as native.

Rumour stated that Ackbar Khan was filled with alarm and rage, either of which might prompt him to execute some of his terrible threats on the helpless hostages; and that he was prepared for any extremity, and to lay the land waste, was evinced by the alarming noises that were heard in the Passes, ere our march began, and by the sky above the mountain-tops being nightly reddened by the blaze of burning villages which he destroyed, so that neither food nor shelter might be found by an advancing foe.

At the hill of Gundamuck, where there is a walled village surrounded by groves of cypresses, Waller saw, with some emotions of interest, the cave in which he lurked after the last fatal stand was made there, and vividly came back to memory the despair of the final struggle.

As our troops began to penetrate into the recesses of those mountains, whose names and features were so calculated to inspire mournful thoughts in all who looked on them (for there had a British army marched in, never more to come forth, being literally swallowed up), they found, as before, the ferocious Ghilzies again in position, and in thousands ready to defend their native rocks with all their native ardour, inflamed by past triumph, the hopes of future plunder, by fanaticism and pleasant doses of bhang; and from steep to steep, and from ridge to ridge, from tree to tree, and hill to hill, they defended themselves, and fought or died with stubborn and resolute bravery, harassing our troops in front, in rear, and on both flanks. Yet on pushed our columns: the dying and the dead fell fast, and remained a ghastly train to mark the rearward route; but every life lost seemed but to add to the pluck and hardihood of the survivors.

The sputtering fire of the long juzails, concentrating to a roar at times, filled all these savage defiles with countless and incessant puffs of white smoke, that started from among the grey impending rocks, where the great yellow gourds, the purple grapes, and the scarlet creepers grew in wild luxuriance; from dark and cavernous fissures and the green groves of the pine and the plane tree. Every beetling crag was fringed with curling smoke, and streaked with fire, scaring the mountain eagles high into mid air, while with every shot that helped to thin our ranks the shrill cry of Allah Ackbar! (God is mighty) was echoed from side to side, to die upward, yet, we hoped, to find no echo in heaven.

A little way within the eastern entrance to the series of defiles, at the village of Jugdulluck, where the mountains are between five and six thousand feet above the sea's level, there was a peculiarly fierce encounter; for there the Afghans, led by the Arab Hadji Abdallah Osman, and inflamed to religious fury by his precepts and mad example, had fortified the summit of the Pass by earthworks and some of our own captured cannon; but, mounting the steep heights on each side, the 9th and 13th Regiments turned the flank of their position, and by the bayonet drove away the defenders amid terrible slaughter, neither side asking or hoping for quarter.

From point to point at other places were fierce contests; and now, as our soldiers opened up with the cold steel those Passes which had been closed to all Europeans for the past eight months, their onward march—a series of prolonged conflicts, in fact—exhibited to them an awful and harrowing scene.

CHAPTER XV.

THE BATTLE OF TIZEEN.

From out of the Passes, dark and shadowing, the reverberating echoes of the adverse musketry roused black clouds of vultures, with angry croak and flapping wing. It would seem almost as if all the obscene birds of Asia had been wont to seek, for months past, this ghastly place—to make it their undisturbed rendezvous; and such, no doubt, it had been, for there,

"Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown,"

all belted and accoutred in the rags of their uniform, just as the death-shots had struck them down, and as they had fallen over each other in piles, lay the remains of Elphinstone's slaughtered army.

Close in ranks, as when living, in some places lay the ghastly relics of the dead. In one spot, where the last stand had been made by Her Majesty's 44th Regiment, more than two hundred skeletons lay in one horrid hecatomb; and in the shreds of red cloth that flapped in the wind, the buttons and badges, sad and agonizing were the efforts made by officers and men to recognise the remains of some dear and jovial friend, some true and gallant comrade in the times that were gone; and it was all the sadder to reflect that most of the fallen had been cut off in their prime, or even before it, as from eighteen to twenty-six years is the average age of our soldiers on service.

In too many, if not nearly all, instances the remains were headless, the skulls having been borne off as trophies by the various mountain tribes; and in some places the white bones lay amid purple, crimson, and golden beds of those sweetly scented violets which the Orientals so often use to flavour their finest sherbets.

For miles upon miles it was but a sad repetition of whitening bones, fragments of uniforms, and ammunition paper, bleached by the wind and rain and the snows of the past winter, together with the shrunken remains of camels, horses, and yaboos, from which the baggage and other trappings had long since been carried off; and ever and always in mid air the croaking and flapping of the ravening vultures, long unused to be disturbed by the living, in that valley of solitude and silence, death and desolation.

Like many others, with a swollen heart, set lips, and stern eyes, Waller reined in his horse, and would look round him from time to time, in places where the dead lay thicker than usual. Our now victorious army was marching in thousands over their fallen comrades, yet with them Waller felt himself alone, and a man possessed by one harassing thought.

His comrades were lying among those bones, through which the rank dog-grass was sprouting—the companions of many a pleasant hour, the sharers of many a past danger. The object of the loving, the gentle, the tender, and the peaceful in England far away lay there, abandoned skeletons, exposed to the elements, to whiten and decay like the fallen branches of the forest.

Orderly and quiet at all times, a deeper silence fell upon our advancing troops as they traversed this terrible scene, a silence broken only by the dropping fire maintained by our advanced guard with the enemy's rear, under Amen Oolah Khan, till the leading brigade of the first division on the road from Khoord Cabul to Tizeen began to ascend the shoulder of a vast green mountain, named the Huft Kothul, where the narrow and tortuous pathway reaches its greatest altitude, rising above even the white mists of the deep and dark green valleys.

Even there, a portion of the path is overlooked by the Castle of Buddeeabad, which has a frontage of nearly eighty feet, and walls so lofty that the mountaineers attributed its erection, of course, to the genii, under Jan Ben Jan, who ruled the world before Adam came. It belonged to the father-in-law of Ackbar Khan, a Ghilzie chief; and there had the unfortunate old General Elphinstone looked his last upon the setting sun.

Under the immediate directions of Ackbar and of Amen Oolah, the Afghans, particularly the Khyberees, in their yellow turbans, the Ghilzies and others, were in vast force, and they poured down such a storm of bullets from rock and bank, cleft and fissure, that the whole air seemed alive with the hissing sound, as they passed over and, too often fatally, through our ranks.

"Thirteenth Light Infantry to the right!—Second Queen's to the left—extend!" were the instant orders of Sir Robert Sale to Waller and his other aide-de-camp or secretary, Sir Richmond Shakespere, a gallant and enterprising officer, of whom more anon; and away they galloped to have them executed. Waller rode, like most of the cavalry men, with a bundle of green corn over his horse's flanks, to serve alike as provender and to keep off the flies; but, as he spurred on to the head of the 13th Regiment, a shot from a jingaul tore it away, and scattered it to the wind. By the bad gunnery of the Afghans, their cannon-balls ricocheted in a way that would have delighted Marshal Vauban, who originally invented that mode of rendering a round shot doubly dangerous, a half-charge causing it to roll, rebound, maim, kill, and cause more disorder than if fired point blank; and hence the origin of the name, as ricoche signifies simply "duck and drake," the name given by boys to the bounding of a flat stone cast horizontally on the water.

The two aides delivered their orders in safety to the advancing battalions, and the commander of each gave his orders for "three companies on the right (it was the left for the 13th) to extend from the centre." Cheerily rang out the Kentish bugles, and away went the skirmishers, confident in their supports, with wonderful rapidity, though the men were falling fast on every hand. They spread over the green sunny slopes to the right and left, firing as they proceeded upward, and swept over the hills in beautiful order, till the central gorge was passed; then closing in by companies, and then in line, each regiment began to fix bayonets, and mutually to utter that hearty "hurrah!" which is ever the inspiring prelude to a charge of British troops.

Brightly flashed the ridge of bayonets in the sunshine, as on right and left the red battalions came wheeling down the grassy slopes at a resolute and steady double. The Afghans, though armed with bayonets too, never waited to cross them, but turned and fled, with howls of rage and terror, abandoning two English pieces of artillery.

Then rang out the trumpets sharp and shrill, and giving the reins to their horses, the 3rd Light Dragoons, all in blue uniform, with white puggerees over their shakos, their long, straight sword-blades flashing and uplifted, their heads stooped, their teeth set with energy, and every bronzed face flushed with ardour, spurred on their way; and as they rushed past at racing speed, Bob Waller, impelled by an irresistible impulse, joined them. It was, indeed, a race to be the first in the task of vengeance; for here and there, unchecked and unrestrained, the privates, if better mounted, would dart in front of the officers, as the true English emulous spirit broke out, each seeking madly to outride his comrades, and be passed by none—so on swept our Light Dragoons like a living flood.

Right and left the trenchant sword-blades went flashing downward in the sun, only to be uplifted for another cut or thrust, the blood-drops flying from them in the air.

In the scattered conflict—for such it became, when the ranks of the charging cavalry were broken open and loose, every file acting in the slaughter independently for himself, and keeping but a slight eye on the motions of his squadron leader—Waller's attention was attracted by a horseman who seemed to be in high authority, and whose figure, arms, and equipment were not unfamiliar to his eye. The Afghan was undoubtedly a brave fellow, and splendidly mounted on a spirited horse, the saddle and trappings of which were elaborately embossed and tasselled with gold, while at his martingale were four long flying tassels of white hair taken from the tails of wild oxen. He had on his left arm a small round shield, adorned by four silver knobs; a dagger was in his teeth, and in his right hand a long and brightly headed lance, with which he had succeeded in unhorsing and pinning more than one of the 3rd Light Dragoons to the earth. He was just in the act of cruelly repassing this weapon through one who had fallen on his face, and who, in his dying agony was tearing up the turf with his hands and feet, when both Waller and Shakespere rode at him simultaneously, and sword in hand.

From the writhing and convulsed body he extricated his spear with difficulty, and turned furiously to face them, glancing and pointing it at each alternately. He wore a steel cap, engraved with gold; a sliding bar through the front peak, fixed there with a screw, protected his face; and in the knob that held his plume—a heron's tuft—there gleamed a precious stone of great value.

For an instant, quick as lightning, he relinquished his lance, letting it drop in the sling behind, while he drew a pistol from his scarlet silk girdle, and firing it at Shakespere, he hurled it dexterously at Waller, who ducked as it whizzed over his head. Recognising now, however, with whom he had to deal, he cried, fearlessly and confidently—

"Shakespere, as a favour, leave this fellow to me, and, with God's help, I shall polish him off as he deserves!"

"Shumsheer-hu-dust! (come on, sword in hand). Dog! thy soul shall be under the devil's jaw tonight!" cried the Afghan with fierce defiance, as his horse curveted and pranced.

He was Amen Oolah Khan, and a splendid and picturesque figure he presented in his brightly coloured and flaming dress, through the openings of which his shirt and sleeves of the finest chain-mail, bright as silver or frostwork on a winter branch, were visible, and, as Waller knew, impervious to the swords used in our service; at the same time he remembered that his pistols had both been discharged, and were still unloaded.

Shakespere reined back his horse, ready, if necessary, to second Waller, to whom he handed a pistol, on the Khan firing a second at him. Thus armed, Waller took a steady aim and fired straight at the head of his antagonist. The latter, to save himself, by a sharp use of the spur and curb, made his horse rear up, so that the bullet entered the throat and spine of the animal, which toppled forward with its head between its knees, just as Amen Oolah was coming to the charge with his lance, the point of which, by the downward sinking of his horse, entered the turf so deeply, that, by the consequent breaking of the shaft, he found himself tumbled ignominiously in a heap from his saddle, and at the mercy of Waller, who, dashing at him, rained blow after blow, without avail, upon his steel cap and mailed shoulders.

The sabre of Amen Oolah had been broken in some previous conflict; he had but one weapon left, the long and deadly Afghan knife, which, as a last resort, he had clenched in his teeth, and with this, while uttering a hoarse cry of rage and defiance, mingled with a rancorous malediction, he rushed at Waller, and strove to drag him from his saddle, spitting at him like a viper the while, and adding, exultingly,

"Ha!—your women are away to Toorkistan, to be the slaves of the Toorkomans—their slaves of the right hand!"

Waller, a finished horseman, was not to be easily dislodged, for he had twice the bulk and strength of his adversary. Twisting the reins round his left arm, he grasped the wrist of the hand which held the menacing knife, and by a single blow of his sword across the fingers, compelled the Khan to drop it. Heavy curses came from his lips, but never once the word amaun (quarter); he knew it would be useless, and he disdained to ask it. No thought of mercy had Waller in his heart, for he knew that if defeated he should have met with none; and on this man's hands there might he, for all he knew, the blood of Mabel Trecarrel, perhaps, of others certainty, and such surmises, at such a time, were maddening.

Barehanded now, the Afghan struggled like a tiger with his powerful adversary, whom he strove to unhorse. Waller endeavoured again and again to run him through the body; but the Sheffield blade bent, and failed to pierce the fine rings of the Oriental shirt of mail, so to end the affair, he smote the Khan repeatedly on the face with the hilt of his sword, but the helmet bar protected him; then, by making his horse rear, he endeavoured to cast him off, or kick him under foot.

Stunned and confused, the savage Afghan at last sank downward, and by some mischance got his head into the stirrup-leather of Waller, whose left foot was unavoidably pressed upon his throat; and as the horse, terrified by this unusual appendage, plunged wildly, and swerved round and round, the wretched Khan was speedily strangled, and sank into a state of insensibility, from which he never recovered, as a couple of the 13th passed their fixed bayonets through his body, and one tore off his beautiful steel cap, from which Waller afterwards obtained the jewel—a sapphire of great value.

The cap itself, which was studded with those turquoises that are found in the mountains of Nishapour, in Khorassan, he tossed to the two soldiers, who proceeded at once to poke them out with their bayonets.

"If I ever meet my Mabel again, this sapphire shall be a gift for her!" thought Waller, with a sigh of weariness, for his victory brought neither triumph nor regret to his heart.

It was afterwards remembered, as a curious instance of retributive justice, that Amen Oollah Khan should die in the battle of Tizeen, almost by the same death as that to which he put his luckless elder brother, that he might succeed to his inheritance—strangulation.

The whole affair occupied only a few minutes; but, long ere it was over, the cavalry had swept far in pursuit, and Waller found himself almost alone. On one side was savage terror; on the other, civilized men thirsty for justice and vengeance; and so on all sides the turbaned hordes were stricken down by those who felt that to them was left the task of atoning for the betrayal and death of friends, comrades, and relatives; and there, on the heights of Tizeen, the standard of Ackbar Khan was trod in the dust, never to rise again!

Once more the sun went down in blood upon the passes of the Khyberees; but once again they were open, and the way to Cabul was clear.

Resistance had ceased; scarcely a single juzail shot was fired next day, when, after halting for the night, our infantry began their march beyond Tizeen, traversing, as the despatch has it, "those frightful ravines, now doubly frightful because of the heaps of dead bodies with which the narrow way was choked."

Another junction was made with the victorious troops of General Nott, advancing from Candahar and Ghuznee; and once more the green and lovely valley of Cabul, bounded by the snow-clad peaks of Kohistan, and threaded by its blue and winding river, came into view beyond the black rocky gorges of the Siah Sung; and the morning sun shone red and brightly on leaden dome and marble minar, on the walls of the city, and the vast castellated masses of the Bala Hissar. The uncased colours of horse and foot, European and Native, rustling in silk and embroidery, were given to the pleasant breeze; the fixed bayonets in long lines came like a stream of glittering steel out of the dark mountain passes; the bands struck up, and once again the merry British drums woke the same echoes that, ages upon ages ago, had replied to the clarions of the conquering Emperor Baber, of Mohammed, of Ghuznee, and even of Alexander and his bare-kneed Macedonians.

But still where were the captive hostages—the women and children?

CHAPTER XVI.

TO TOORKISTAN!

The pen of Scott would have failed to describe, and the pencil of Gustave Doré to depict, the anguish of the poor hostages, when, at the behest of Ackbar, and at the very time the long prayed-for succour was coming, they were compelled to set out on their sorrowful journey towards the Land of Desert.

"Oh, my poor children—my helpless lambs—my fatherless little ones!" one would cry, folding in her loving arms her scared, pale, and half-starved brood, gathering them to her while they were yet her own, "even as a hen gathereth her chickens."

"My husband—my husband! shall we never meet again?"

"My poor 'Bob,' or 'Bill,' or, it might be, 'Tom,'" some soldier's wife would exclaim, "I shall never see the likes of you more, darling;" for though Tom perhaps drank all his pay, and gave Biddy now and then "a taste of his buff belt," he "was an angel, compared to a naygur, anyhow!"

But the majority of the hostages were ladies, and some of them were like Lady Macnaghten and Sir Robert Sale's daughter, who were widows—who had lost alike husband and children, and mourned as those only mourn who have no hope. And now many a quaint pet name, known best in the nursery ami to the playfulness of the loving heart, was mingled with the most solemn of prayers.

"Death—death were better than this!" would be the despairing cry of some; and, ere their sad journey ended, death came to more than one of that devoted band.

For in one or two instances, despite the piteous entreaties of the ladies, some soldiers—those very men whom the 13th had subscribed their rupees at the drum-head to ransom—whose weakness from wounds or bodily illness rendered them incapable of riding or marching were shot by the wayside, and left unburied, even as so many lamed horses or diseased dogs which were useless might have been. One or two, who were weary of life, entreated to have it ended thus, and all whom the Dooranees destroyed thus in obedience to Ackbar's orders and the grim law, perhaps, of necessity, died peacefully and piously—sick of their present existence, and hopeful of the future; but the women screamed, lamented, and prayed, seeking to muffle their ears when the death-shots rang in the mountain wilderness.

Mabel Trecarrel was weak and ailing too, but she was much too valuable a species of commodity to be shot out of hand, like a poor Feringhee soldier, even though quite as much a Kaffir and infidel as he might be; so she was tenderly borne in a palanquin which had been found in the cantonments, and which contained every comfort and appliance for travelling—little drawers for holding clothes or food, and even a mirror, though she never looked at it.

Like a few more, she was silent in her grief, and found a refuge in tears.

The wedded wife might utter loudly and despairingly the name of her husband, and the parent that of the dead or absent child, finding a relief for the overcharged heart in sound; but, even in that terrible time, the poor betrothed girl could only whisper, in the inmost recesses of her breast, of the lover she never more might see, and gaze backward with haggard eyes on the features of the landscape with which they had both become familiar—the hills of Beymaru, the ridges of the Black Rocks, and the smiling valley of Cabul, as they all lessened and faded away in the distance, while slowly but surely, under a watchful and most unscrupulous guard, the train of prisoners, on active Tartar horses or plodding Afghan yaboos, in swinging dhooleys and curtained litters of other kinds, wound among the mountains on their way to Toorkistan, the frontiers of which were only about a week's journey distant.

And what was the prospect before them?

Separation and distribution, to be bartered for horses, or sold into slavery and degradation; the few men among them, irrespective of rank, to be the bondsmen, syces, carpet-spreaders, and grooms, hewers of wood and drawers of water: the women, if young, to be the veriest slaves of ignorant and unlettered masters, as yet unseen and unknown; if old, to become nurses and drudges to the women of the Usbec Tartars: and all these were Christians, and civilised subjects of the Queen; many of them accomplished, highly bred, nobly born, and tenderly nurtured.

Terrible were the emotions of the English mother, who, circumstanced thus, looked on her pure and innocent daughters and thought of what a week might bring forth!

Yet such were the fates before them—the fates that even the quickest marching of our troops might fail to avert; for were not the Afghans, as they heard, again disputing every inch of the Passes with a desperation which proved that Lord Auckland's policy, and that of the "peace at any price party" at home, would never have availed with those who deemed diplomacy but cowardly cunning, treaties as trash, bribes as fair "loot," and all war as legal fraud?

The lamentations of the women at times, when mingled and united (for grief is very infectious), roused even the usually phlegmatic Saleh Mohammed, who rode in the centre of the caravan, perched between the humps of a very high camel.

"In the land to which you are going, of course, you shall find neither Jinnistan, the Country of Delight, nor its capital, the City of Precious Stones; neither will fruits and sweet cakes drop into your mouths, as if you sat under the blessed tree of Toaba, which is watered by the rivers of paradise," said he, half scoffingly; "but you will see the vast sandy waste of the Kirghisian desert, which to the thirsty looks like a silvery sea in the distance; and some of you may happily see the city of Souzak, which contains five hundred houses of stone, and I doubt if the Queen of the Feringhees has so many in her little island. Barikillah! and you will see the black tents and the fleecy flocks of the Usbec Tartars, for they are numerous as leaves in the vale of Cashmere."

And thus he sought to console them when, on the evening of the first day's journey, they halted at Killi-Hadji, on the Ghuznee road (only seven miles westward from Cabul), and so called from the killi, or fort of mud that guards its cluster of huts. It was approached by narrow and tortuous lanes overhung by shady mulberry-trees; and there, beside the walls of the fort, they bivouacked for the night.

The deep crimson glory of sunset was over; but the flush of the western sky lengthened far the purple shadows of tree, and rock, and hut, even of the tall camels, ere they knelt to rest, across the scene of the bivouac, which was not without its strong aspect of the quaint and picturesque, albeit the sad eyes of those who looked thereon were sick of such elements, as being associated with all their most unmerited miseries.

Unbitted, with leather tobrahs, or nose-bags filled with barley, hanging from their heads, the patient horses were eating, while the hardier yaboos grazed the long grass that grew in the lanes and waste places.

Fires were lighted, and around them all of the Dooranee guard, who were not posted in the chain of sentinels, sat cross-legged, smoking hempseed, cleaning their arms, fixing fresh flints or dry matches to their musket-locks; others were industriously picking out of their furred poshteens those active insects of the genus pulex, called by the Arabians "the father of leapers," while the flesh of a camel, which had been shot by the way, as useless—its feet being wounded and sore—sputtered and broiled on the embers for supper, and the light from the flames fell in strong gleams and patches on the strange equipment, the swarthy turbaned faces, and gleaming eyes of those wild fellows, whose shawl-girdles bristled with arms and powder-flasks, and some four hundred of whom were furnished with muskets and bayonets.

A spear stuck upright in the earth—its sharp point glittering like a tiny red star—indicated the head-quarters, where, muffled in his poshteen and ample chogah, with a piece of thick xummul folded under him, Saleh Mohammed Khan, propped against the saddle of his camel, prepared, with pipe in mouth, to dose away the hours of the short August night.

Most, if not nearly all, the lady captives, wore now, of necessity, the Afghan travelling-dress, a large sheet shrouding the entire form, having a bourkha, or veil of white muslin, furnished with two holes to peep through; and with those who, muffled thus, sat in kujawurs, or camel-litters, the semblance of their orientalism was complete.

From time to time, dried branches or cass—a prickly furze grass which grows in bunches—were cast upon the fire, causing the flames to shoot up anew, on the pale faces of the prisoners and the dark faces of their guards, till at last the embers died out and the white ashes alone remained; and such was the scene which, like a species of phantasmagoria, met the eyes of Mabel Trecarrel, when, in the still watches of the night, she drew back the curtains of her palanquin and looked forth occasionally. But the stars began to pale in the sky; its blue gave place to opal tints; the sun arose, and after the Mohammedans had said their prayers with their faces towards Mecca, and the Christians with their eyes bent towards the earth or to heaven, once more the heartless march was resumed, in the same order as on the preceding day, through a pass in the mountains, and from thence across the beautiful valley of Maidan.

Saleh Mohammed, though a Khan, having once been a Soubadar in Captain Hopkins's Afghan Levy (from which he had deserted to the party of Ackbar Khan, at the beginning of the troubles), had some ideas of military order and show: thus he had at the head of the caravan—for it resembled nothing else—six Hindostanees, furnished with some of our drums and bugles gleaned up in the Khyber Pass, and with these they made the most horrible noises for several miles at the commencement and close of each day's march; but even this medley of discordant sounds failed to extract the faintest smile from the hostages—even from Major Pottinger and the few soldiers—so sunk were they in heart and spirit now.

In the Maidan valley they rode between fields of golden grain bordered by towering poplars and pale willows. Bare, bleak-looking mountains undulated in the distance, and the poor ladies eyed them wistfully.

Were these the borders of dreaded Toorkistan?

They proved, however, to be only a portion of the Indian Caucasus, the extremity of which, the Koh-i-baba, a snow-clad peak, rises to the height of sixteen thousand feet above the level of the Indian Sea.

That night Saleh Mohammed chose a pleasant halting-place for them, influenced by some sudden emotion of pity. There they were supplied with plums, wild cherries, peaches, and the white apricot which has the flavour of rose water. But ere morning there was an alarm; a confused discharge of musketry was fired in every direction at random, all round the bivouac; one or two bullets whistled through it. A dhooley-wallah was shot dead, and several red arrows, barbed and bearded, stuck quivering in the turf; yells were heard, and then a furious galloping of horses passing swiftly away in the distance.

It was a chupao—a night attack planned by some of the Hazarees, a wild and independent Tartar tribe, whose thatched huts lie sunk and unseen on the hill slopes, and on whose confines they had halted. They are all good archers, and, though armed with the matchlock, usually prefer the bow.

They are bitter foes of the Afghans, and had hoped, by making a dash, to cut off some of their prisoners; but Saleh Mohammed was too wary for them, and on that evening had doubled his guards ere the sun went down.

The 2nd of September found the train traversing the Kaloo Mountain, one in height only inferior to the Koh-i-baba. From thence, over a vast chaos of wild and terrific hilly peaks that spread beneath them like the pointed waves of a petrified sea, they could view, at last, and afar off, the plains of Toorkistan—the land of their future bondage; and anew the wail of grief and woe rose from them at the sight.

The following day, that the absurd might not be wanting amid their misery, to the surprise of all, Saleh Mohammed appeared mounted on his camel, not in his usual amplitude of turban, with his flowing chogah and Cashmere shawls, but with his lean, shrunken, and bony figure buttoned up in a tight regimental blue surtout, with gold shoulder-scales, and crimson sash, frog-belt, and sword, all of which had whilom belonged to Jack Polwhele, of the Cornish Light Infantry, a tiny forage cap (which Jack used to wear very much over his right ear) being perched on the back of his bald head, while the chin-strap came uncomfortably only below the tip of his high hooked nose; and thus arrayed he prepared to meet and, as he hoped, duly to impress Zoolficar Khan, the governor of the town of Bameean, where the first halt was to be made for further and final orders from Ackbar, as to whether the hostages should be sold or slain; for now their custodian began to have some strange doubts upon the subject, and now his victims were fairly out of Afghanistan and in the land of the Tartars, nine days of monotonous and arduous journey distant from Cabul.

We have lately seen the kind of mercy meted out to helpless hostages by Communal savages in the boasted city of Paris—the self-styled centre of civilization—and so may fairly tremble for the fate of those who were in the hands of Asiatic fanatics on the western slopes of the Hindoo-Kush.

CHAPTER XVII.

MABEL'S PRESENTIMENT.

Mabel Trecarrel seemed to see or to feel the image of Waller become more vividly impressed upon her mind, now, as every day's journey, as every hour, and every mile towards the deserts of Great Tartary, increased the perils of her own situation, and seemed to add to the difficulties, if not entirely to close all the chances, of their ever meeting again on this earth; and as Bameean, a rock-hewn city, the Thebes of the East, and geographically situated in Persia, began to rise before the caravan, when it wound down from the Akrobat Pass, a deeper chill fell on her heart, for she had a solemn presentiment creeping over her that there all her sorrows, if not those of her companions too, should be ended.

A laborious progress of several miles, during which her now weary dhooley-wallahs staggered and reeled with fatigue, brought them from the mountain slopes into a plain, damp, muddy, and marshy, where from the plashy soil there rose a mist through which the city seemed to shimmer and loom, shadowy and ghost-like. A great portion of this plain was waste, and hence believed to be the abode of ghouls, afreets, and demons, who, in the dark and twilight, sought to lure the children of Adam to unknown but terrible doom.

A gust of wind careering over the waste from the Pass, rolled away, like a veil of gauze, the shroud which had half concealed the place they were approaching; and with a mournful and sickly interest, not unmixed with anticipated dread, Mabel and her friends surveyed the city of Bameean.

Rising terrace over terrace on the green acclivities of an insulated mountain, the bolder features and details shining in the ruddy sunlight, the intermediate spaces sunk in sombre shadow, it exhibited a series of the most wonderfully excavated mansions, temples, and ornamental caverns (the abodes of its ancient and nameless inhabitants), to the number of more than twelve thousand, covering a slope of eight miles in extent.

Many of those rock-hewn edifices, carved out of the living stone which supports the mountain, and are the chief portions of its foundation and structure, have beautiful friezes and entablatures, domes and cupolas, with elaborately arched doors and windows. Others are mere dens and caverns, with square air-holes; but towering over all are many colossal figures, more particularly two—a woman one hundred and twenty feet high, and another of a man, forty feet higher—all hewn out of the face of a lofty cliff.

By what race, or when, those mighty and wondrous works of art were formed, at such vast labour, no human record, not even a tradition, remains to tell; their origin is shrouded by a veil of mystery, like that of the ruined cities of Yucatan; so whether they are relics of Bhuddism, or were hewn in the third century, during the dynasty of the Sassanides, has nothing to do with our story. But the poor hostages, as they were conveyed past those silent, dark, and empty temples, abandoned now to the jackal, the serpent, and the flying fox, with the towering and gigantic apparitions of the stone colossi lookingly grimly down in silence, felt strange emotions of chilly awe come over them—the ladies especially. To Mabel Trecarrel, in her weak and nervous state, the scene proved too much; she became hysterical, and wept and laughed at the same moment, to the great perplexity of Saleh Mohammed, who was quite unused to such exhibitions among the ladies of his zenanali.

Though stormed by Jenghiz Khan and his hordes, in 1220, after a vigorous resistance, this rock-hewn city, by its materials and massiveness, could suffer little; yet it was subsequently deserted by all its inhabitants, who named it "Maublig," or the unfortunate. After that time, its history sank into utter obscurity; its once-fertile plain reverted to a desert state once more; yet unchanged as when Bameean was in its zenith, its river of the same name flows past the caverned mountain, on its silent way to the snowy wastes where its waters mingle with those of the Oxus.

In this remote place the captives were all, as usual, enclosed in a walled fort which contained a few hovels of mud, where in darkness and damp they strove to make themselves as comfortable as circumstances permitted, with blankets, xummuls, and the saddles on which they had ridden.

The Dooranees of Saleh Mohammed had to keep sure watch and ward there, for the Usbec Tartars are the predominating people, and, though divided into many tribes, they are all rigid Soonees, with but small favour for the Afghans; and the prisoners soon learned that the unusual costume of Saleh Mohammed, instead of inspiring Zoolficar Khan, as he had expected, with wonder, only excited in that sturdy Toorkoman an emotion of contempt, that a Mussulman should so far degrade himself by adopting, even for a day, the dress of a Feringhee—a Kaffir; and they had something approaching to hasty words on the subject, when, on the first evening of their meeting, those dignitaries sat together on the same carpet under a date tree in the garden of the fort, while slaves supplied them with hot coffee, wheat pillau, pipes, and tobacco.

There, too, had Mabel been borne on a pallet, by the express permission of the Khan, that she might enjoy the sunshine; there was, he knew, no chance of her attempting to escape; and to prevent any covetous Toorkoman from playing tricks with the tender wares entrusted to him, he had a double chain of sentinels with loaded muskets planted round them, as Zoolficar Khan could perceive when reconnoitring the place, which was outside the city of Bameean, but immediately under the shadow of its temples and rock-hewn giants; for Zoolficar, having learned that Saleh Mohammed was proceeding towards the deserts with the captives to sell, to punish the men of their tribe for interference in the affairs of Afghanistan, was not indisposed to have the first selection from among them, and had resolved to look over "the lot" with a purchaser's eye.

He had already, over their pipes and coffee, broached the subject to Saleh Mohammed; but the latter, undecided in everything, save that he had to halt where he was for fresh orders from the Sirdir, Ackbar Khan, would not as yet listen to any proposals for selling or bartering, and eventually dozed off asleep, with the amber mouthpiece of the hubble-bubble in his mouth, leaving Zoolficar Khan to amuse himself as best he might.

Mabel, weary and faint with her long journey of nine consecutive days, though borne easily and carefully enough in a palanquin, lay listlessly and drowsily pillowed on her pallet, under the cool and pleasant shade of an acacia tree. Near her stood a tiny pagoda of white marble, carved as minutely and elaborately as a Chinese ivory puzzle; and before it was a tank wherein were floating some of the beautiful red lotus, the flowers of which far exceed in size and beauty those of the ordinary water-lily.

The slender, drooping, and fibrous branches of the acacia tree, so graceful in their forms and so tender in their texture, cast a partial shadow over her, and, as they moved slowly to and fro in the soft evening wind, by their rocking or oscillating motion predisposed her to slumber; and so, ere long, she slept, but slept only to dream of the past—the happy, happy past, for keenly did she and all who were with her realise now that "it is the eternal looking back in this world that forms the staple of all our misery."

Anon, she dreamed of the monotonous swinging of her palanquin, and the doggrel songs by which the poor half-nude bearers sought to beguile their toil and cheer the mountain way; now it was of Waller, with his fair English face, his handsome winning eyes, and frank, jovial manner, retorting some of the banter of Polwhele or Burgoyne. She was at her piano; he was hanging over her as of old, and their whispers mingled, though fears suggested that the horrible Quasimodo, the Khond, with his cat-like moustaches and mouth that resembled a red gash, was concealed somewhere close by; then she heard cries and shots—they were attacked by Hazarees, Ghazees, Ghilzies, or some other dark-coloured wretches; and with a little scream she started and awoke, to find that her veil had been rudely withdrawn—uplifted, in fact—in the hand of a man who stood under the acacia tree, and had been leisurely surveying her in her sleep with eyes expressive of inspection and satisfaction.

She shuddered, and a low cry of fear escaped her; for she knew by the cast of his face, by his air and equipment, that the stranger was a Toorkoman—the first who had come—by his unwelcome presence bringing fresh perils, as she knew, to all the English ladies; yet he was a handsome fellow, not much over five-and-twenty, and so like Zohrab Zubberdust in aspect and bearing, that they might have passed for brothers.

Mabel feebly struggled into a sitting posture, and, snatching her veil from his hand, looked steadily, perhaps a little defiantly, at Zoolficar Khan; for he it was who, when his older host dozed off, to dream of plunder and paradise, had proceeded to make a reconnaissance of whatever might be seen of the prisoners and their guards; for it might yet suit his interests or his fancy to cut off the whole caravan in a night or so. Thus, a few paces from where Saleh Mohammed was sleeping in the sunshine had brought him unexpectedly on Mabel!

He was a dashing fellow, whose dress was not the least remarkable thing about him. His trowsers, of ample dimensions, were of bright blue cloth, very baggy, and thrust into short yellow boots; he had on three collarless jackets, all of different hues, and richly fringed and laced; a large turban of silk of every colour, with a white heron's plume, to indicate that he was a chief; a shawl girdle, with sword, dagger, and long-barrelled awkward Turkish pistols stuck therein, completed his attire. His keen, sharp Tartar features, though suggestive of good humour by their general expression, were not, however, without much of cunning, rakish insolence, and the bold effrontery incident to a lawless state of society, a knowledge of power, and much of contempt or indifference for the feelings of others. He looked every inch one of those wild

"Toorkomans, countless as their flocks, led forth
From th' aromatic pastures of the north;
Wild warriors of the Turquoise hills, and those
Who dwell beyond the everlasting snows
Of Hindoo Koosh, in stormy freedom bred,
Their fort the rock, their camp the torrent's bed!"

He simply gave the scared Mabel a smile, full of confidence and saucy meaning, and then turned away, leaving her a prey to emotions of fear—a fear that might have been all the greater had she heard what passed between him and Saleh Mohammed at the time when she, trembling in heart and feeble in limb, crept back to the ladies' huts to tell them, with lips blanched by terror, that "the first Toorkoman had come!"

And stronger than ever grew her presentiment within her.

The craving to hear of the movements of the three British armies which they knew to be still in Afghanistan was strong as ever in the hearts of the captives—to hear the last, ere a barrier rose between them and their past life; and that barrier seemed now to be the mighty chain of Hindoo Koosh rising between them and the way to India and to home. Long had they hoped against hope. Nott, and Pollock, and Sale—where were they and their soldiers? What were they doing? For the Dooranees would tell nothing. Had they and their forces been destroyed in detail, even as Elphinstone's had been? Those yells and noisy discharges of musketry, in which the captors at times indulged in honour of alleged victories over the three Kaffir Sirdirs, on tidings brought by wandering hadjis, filthy faquirs, and dancing dervishes, could they be justified? Alas! fate seemed to have done its worst!

Surmises were become threadbare; invention was worn out. Each of the poor captives had striven, by suggestions of probabilities and by efforts of imagination, to flatter themselves and buoy up the hearts of others; but all seemed at an end now.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE GOVERNOR OF BAMEEAN.

Waking up Saleh Mohammed without much ceremony, the young Toorkoman chief proceeded to business at once, but in a very cunning way, commencing with another subject, like a wily lawyer seeking to lure and throw a witness off his guard.

"After a nine days' journey, Khan, you must be short of provisions?" said he.

"Oh, fear not for our presence here in Bameean," replied Saleh Mohammed, leisurely sucking at his hubble-bubble, the light of which had gone out; "every tobrah full of oats, every maund of ottah and rice, we require shall be duly paid for."

"You mistake me; I did not mean that."

"What then? Bismillah! we are rich: the spoil of the Kaffir dogs who come to Cabul has made us happy."

Zoolficar's almond-shaped eyes glistened with covetousness on hearing this. He reflected: the Dooranees were not quite five hundred strong, and he could bring a thousand Tartar horsemen into the field; hence, why might not all this plunder so freely spoken of, and these slaves, two of whom he had seen (and they were so white and handsome!), be his?

"You propose to remain here for some days, aga?" he resumed, seating himself cross-legged, and playing with the silken tassel of his sabre.

"Yes."

"Waiting for orders from Ackbar Khan?"

"Yes."

"His final firmaun, I think you said?"

"Yes."

"To advance or retire?"

"Yes."

"If he has proved signally victorious?" queried Zoolficar sharply, as he grew impatient of these mere affirmatives, which were resorted to by the other merely to give him time to think and sift the other's purpose.

"Wallah billah—victorious."

"Yes—which, under Allah, we cannot doubt?"

"Well, aga."

"Then his orders will be to sell these hostages, I suppose?"

"Yes—perhaps."

"Where, Khan?—here in Bameean?"

"No; they will bring larger prices nearer Bokhara."

"But if he is not victorious?" suggested Zoolficar.

"Staferillah! Then we must leave the event to fate; or my orders may be——" and here even Saleh Mohammed paused ere he made the atrocious admission that hovered on his tongue.

"What—what?"

"To behead them. Ackbar has sworn that none should live to tell the tale of those who came up the Khyber Pass; and I must own that his sparing these surprised me."

There was a pause, after which the Governor of Baraeean said—

"And when may you expect those final orders?"

"Or tidings, let us call them."

"Well, well, aga, this is playing with words."

"Tidings that shall guide me may come without orders," replied Saleh Mohammed, glancing at the green flag of Ackbar which was flying on the fort, and then half closing his eyes to watch the other keenly, and as if to read in his face the drift of all these questions. "You surely take a deep interest in these Kaffirs, Zoolficar Khan?" he added.

"I take an interest, at least, in two whom I have seen—in one particularly."

"The Hindoo ayah in the red garment?" suggested Saleh, pointing with the amber mouthpiece of his pipe to an old nurse who was passing, with two of the captive children.

"The devil—no! One who is beautiful as the rose with the hundred leaves—one with a skin as fair as if she had bathed in the waters of Cashmere; an idol more lovely than ever adorned the house of Azor! She was under yonder tree asleep, when I lifted her veil and looked on her."

"Allah Ackbar—now we have it!" exclaimed Saleh Mohammed, with something between irritation and amusement. "Well, know, aga, that to quote a Parsee or Hindoo banker's book in lieu of Hafiz might be more to the purpose."

"Perhaps so: we have more metal in our scabbards than in our purses, in the desert here."

"They have tempers, these Feringhee women, I can tell you," said the Dooranee, with a quiet laugh.

"So have ours, for the matter of that, and are free enough with their slipper heel on a man's beard at times."

"Ah! all women, I dare say, are like the apples of Istkahar, one half sweet and one half sour," said the old Khan, shaking his long beard.

"You must seek the well of youth again," rejoined the young Toorkoman, laughing. "There is another Kaffir damsel whose voice sounded sweetly, as if she had tasted of the leaves that shadow the tomb of Tan-Sien," he continued, using in his ordinary conversation figures and phraseology that seem no way far-fetched to an Oriental; "yes, aga, tender and soft, for I heard her sing her two children to sleep in yonder hut. Yet she may never have been in Gwalior," added Zoolficar; for the lady was an officer's widow, young and pretty, with two poor sickly babes; and the tomb he referred to was that of the famous musician, who once flourished at the court of the Emperor Ackbar, and the leaves of a tree near which are supposed to impart, when eaten, a wondrous melody to the human voice.

"Then am I to understand that you have set eyes upon both these prisoners?" asked Saleh Mohammed, his keen black eyes becoming very round, as he seemed to make up more fully to the matter in hand.

"Please God, I have. In a word," said Zoolficar Khan, lowering his voice, "I shall give you a purse of five hundred tomauns for them both—peaceably, and help you to plunder the Hazarees on your way home."

"And what of the Sirdir?"

"Tell him they died on the way: moreover, I don't want the two children—you may keep them."

This liberality failed to find any approbation in Saleh Mohammed, who affected to look indignant, and exclaimed—

"I am Saleh Mohammed Khan, chief of the Dooranees, and not a slave-dealer, staferillah!—God forbid!"

"Neither is Ackbar Khan—a son of the royal house of Afghanistan; yet he has sent hither those people for sale, in your charge—for sale to the Toorkomans; and what am I?"

"I have no final orders—as yet," replied the Khan, doggedly.

"For their disposal, you mean?"

"No."

"For what, then?"

"Simply to halt here; to act peaceably, but watchfully, Zoolficar Khan—watchfully," replied the other in a pointed manner; "and hourly now I may expect a cossid with a firmaun from Cabul."

"The Hazarees are in arms in your rear, and, ere your cossid comes, there may be a chupao in the night, and the fort may be looted."

"By them, or your people?"

"Nay, I said not mine, aga."

"But you thought it," was the blunt response.

"Who, save Allah, may pretend to know what another man thinks?"

"Well, we are prepared alike to protect ourselves and to keep or slay; yea—for it may come to that—to slay, root and branch, those Kaffir hostages. I would not betray my trust, were you Kedar Khan with all his wealth!" continued Saleh Mohammed, flushing red, and speaking as earnestly as if he really felt all he said, while referring to that ancient king of Toorkistan, whose fabled riches were so great, that when on the march he had always before him seven hundred horsemen, with battle-axes of silver, and the same number behind, with battle-axes of gold.

So far as slaughter was concerned, if that sequel were necessary, Zoolficar Khan felt sure that Saleh Mohammed would keep his word; and he was about to retire partially baffled, with his mind full of visions for securing the plunder by a midnight attack on the Dooranees, either while in the fort or when on the march; and he was casting a furtive glance to where he had last seen Mabel, combining it with a low salaam to his host, when, ere he could take his leave, a strange figure on a foam-covered yaboo rode furiously into the fort and dismounted before them. He was almost nude; his lean body, reduced to bone and brawn, was powdered with sandal-wood ashes; his hair hung in vast volume over his back and shoulders; his only garment was a pair of goatskin breeches; a gourd for water hung by a strap over his shoulder, and this, together with a long Afghan knife, a large wooden rosary of ninety-nine beads, and a knotted staff, completed his equipment.

"Lah-allah-mahmoud-resoul-Allah!" he yelled, flourishing the staff as he sprang from his shaggy yaboo.

"We know that well enough, Osman Abdallah," said the Dooranee chief, impatiently, to the Arab Hadji, for it was he who came thus suddenly, like a flash of lightning; "but from whence come you?"

"Cabul; or the mountains near it, rather."

"To me?"

"Yes, Khan, with a message from the Sirdir," replied this fierce, wild, ubiquitous being, whose skin bore yet the scarcely healed marks of Waller's sword-thrust, as he drew from his girdle a sorely soiled scrap of paper, and bowed his head reverentially over it; for the bearer of a letter from such a personage as the Prince Ackbar must treat the document with as much respect as if he himself were present.

"And what of the Sirdir?" asked Saleh, starting forward.

"Allah kerim; he has been defeated by the Kaffir's dogs at Tizeen—routed by Pollock Sahib—totally!"

"Silence, fool!" cried the Dooranee, with a swift, fierce glance at the Toorkoman, as he snatched from the hands of the Hadji, and without a word of greeting or thanks, the little scroll, and then opened it deliberately and slowly, as if the disposal of a flock of sheep were the matter in hand, and not the lives or deaths, the captivity or liberty, of so many helpless human beings. The missive contained but three words, and the seal of Ackbar—

"March to Kooloom."

And Zoolficar Khan, who peeped over his shoulder without ceremony, had read it too. The beetle brows of Saleh Mohammed were close over his fiery eyes, as he said, haughtily—

"Where is this place? I may ask, as you have read the name."

"Kooloom—it is a steep, rugged, and perilous journey, Khan."

"And what am I to do when I get there?" asked Saleh Mohammed, ponderingly, of himself, and not of his companion.

"But you are not yet there," said the latter, in a low voice.

"How—what do you mean?"

"The way may be beset. Have I not said that it is perilous?"

"Well, perhaps we shall not go," replied the other, with an unfathomable smile; and with low salaams they separated, each quite ready for and prepared to outwit the other.

One fact they had both learned: Ackbar Khan was defeated, and not victorious!

CHAPTER XIX.

THE ALARM.

"Then you have seen the fighting against the Kaffirs, I suppose?" asked Saleh Mohammed, grimly.

"Seen! Nay, Khan, I fought against them in person; at Jugdulluck, the defence of the village was entrusted to me——"

"And lost by a Hadji," said the Khan, with a sneer.

"Yes, even as the heights of Tizeen were lost by a Khan," retorted the other.

"A Khan—who?"

"Amen Oolah—who was killed there."

"Was the slaughter great?"

"Of the Faithful, mean you?"

"Yes: I ask not of the Kaffirs—may their white faces be confounded!"

"The slaughter might remind Azrael, and the angels who looked on us, of the Prophet when he fought at Bedr. It was not so great, of course, as that of the Feringhees when they left Cabul; for Ackbar's orders were then, that but one should be left alive, if even that; but the white smoke, as it rolled on the wind, along the green sides of the hills, and ascended skyward out of the deep, dark Passes, was like that which shall precede the last day, and for two moons fill all space, from the east to the west, from the rising to the setting of the sun."

"Silence!" grumbled Saleh Mohammed, who was full of earnest thought, and in no mood for religious canting just then, as the orders of Ackbar and the collateral news of his defeat perplexed, while the hints and covert threats of the Governor of Bameean alarmed and irritated him. "So this is all you know, Hadji Osman?"

"All, save that I have a letter for Pottinger Sahib."

"From whom?" asked the chief, sharply.

"Shireen Khan, of the Kuzzilbashes."

"Fool! why not speak of this before? Yet perhaps it is as well that yonder Toorkonian dog is gone," exclaimed Saleh Mohammed, as he impetuously tore the missive from the hand of the cunning Hadji, who probably knew its contents; for a most singular leer came into his repulsive face, as he watched the dark visage of the Dooranee, seeming all the darker in the twilight now; for the golden flush was dying in the west, and its fading light fell faintly on the rock-hewn edifices and wondrous colossi that towered on the hill-slope above the fort, one half of which was sunk in shadow.

The Arab Hadji, as his creed inculcated, loathed the infidels, but this loathing did not extend to their loot and treasures; he was not indifferent to their wines and other good things (in secret, of course), and he loved their golden English guineas and shining rupees—their shekels and talents of silver—quite as much as any of "the cloth" (not that he indulged in that commodity), the reverend faquirs, doctors, and dervishes of enlightened Feringhistan; so, for "a consideration," he had actually brought a message to a "Kaffir," concerning the redemption of his companions. The letter briefly detailed the victory of General Pollock at Tizeen, placing beyond a doubt the rout of Ackbar, and his flight to Kohistan, and suggested that the Major, in his own name and those of five other British officers, who were prisoners with him, should offer to Saleh Mohammed the sum of twenty thousand rupees as a ransom for all—especially the ladies and children—the sum to be paid down on their release; and a glow of triumph, satisfaction, and avarice filled the keen eyes and face of the old Dooranee as he read over the words carefully thrice; and then stroking his mighty beard, as if making a promise to himself, and seeming already to feel the rupees loading his girdle, he exclaimed—

"Shabash! Allah keerim! (Very good! God is merciful!) The Major Sahib will act like a sensible man, and trust to my generosity. The game of Ackbar—whose dog is he now?—is about played out at Cabul; he is checkmated—has not a move on the board. So Saleh Mohammed may as well act mercifully, and treat with the Feringhee Major for the ransom of his people."

The night was passed as usual, after prayers were over, in stupor or the wonted listlessness of despair, by the captives, who were crowded all together in the mud hovels of the fort, their Dooranee guards lying outside in their chogahs, poshteens, and horsecloths; but in the morning they saw with surprise that a new flag—a scarlet one—had replaced the sacred green, which had floated on the outer wall at sunset.

And each asked of the other what might this portend? It was the signal that Saleh Mohammed had revolted from the cause of Ackbar Khan; but of what his own movements or measures were to be they knew nothing yet. This new feature in affairs bewildered and baffled the ulterior views of Zoolficar Khan, who was still more surprised when, soon after dawn, the old Dooranee, with a detachment of his people, sallied from the fort, attacked and captured—not, however, without resistance, some sharp firing, and use of the sabre—a whole convoy of provisions which passed en route for Bokhara—an act of daring for which he found it difficult to account, as it would be sure to rouse the terrible Emir of that kingdom again these intruders in Toorkistan; but doubtless, thought Zoolficar, the Afghan must know his own plans and power best.

Loth, however, not to pick up something in the broils or forays that were so likely to ensue, he began gradually to muster his Toorkoman followers, desiring them to draw to a head in a wood near the Bameean river, about nightfall, to watch the Dooranees in the fort, and to gall or attack them either in advancing or retiring therefrom; but, ere dark came, there occurred what was to him a fresh source of surprise, and to Saleh Mohammed of serious alarm, while it chilled with a new-born fear the hearts of the prisoners, to whom Major Pottinger had now communicated his letter, his promises and plans, with all the tidings of the Hadji, thereby for a time exciting their wildest and most joyous anticipations (at a moment when hope had sunk to its lowest ebb) of freedom and restoration to the world: so friends were rushing to congratulate friends, and weeping with happiness, mothers were wildly clasping their children to their breast, and all were giving thanks to God.

Affecting ignorance of any change that had taken place in the mind of the Dooranee, towards evening Zoolficar Khan in all his bravery, but alone, rode to the gate of the fort, when, greatly to his wrath, he was denied admittance by Saleh Mohammed in person.