CHAPTER XIII.

A FIGHT WITH THE MOHMUNDS.

Save for flying rumours cantonment life at Jellalabad had been a little monotonous for some time past. Paper hunts had been resorted to, and polo was played every afternoon by officers of the 10th Hussars, riding Cabul ponies upon a piece of ground cleared for them by their men about two miles from the city.

Other officers exercised their skill in 'potting,' with the breechloader, quails, and the beautiful partridge, called the 'hill chuckore' by the Afghans, wild sheep, and antelopes, while some of the more adventurous brought down a wolf or hyena, but as these were chiefly to be found at a distance some personal risk was incurred, and one might be 'potted' in turn by the 'juzail' of some hill-man lurking unseen behind a rock or tree.

The counterbalance to these little amusements were visitations of wind and dust, or torrents of rain, that pattered like a storm of dry peas on the tents of the troops who were in camp near the city, so, when the weather had become settled, all hailed with considerable satisfaction the advent of the expedition under General Macpherson to look after a gathering of the Mohmunds—a tribe of about fifty thousand souls, whose fighting men were reported as mustering for mischief on the other side of the Cabul river, in the south-west corner of the Jellalabad Valley, opposite to Girdi Kas, where the stream flows away towards Chardeh.

The staff were in their saddles betimes, and on the ground in front of the city.

'Good morning, gentlemen,' said old Spatterdash, as he came cantering up on his Arab in the dark. 'What is the hour?'

Colville adroitly caught a firefly, and placing it for a moment on the glass of his watch, saw the time.

'Four o'clock, colonel.'

'We have other work this morning than pig-sticking or potting jackals and foxes; but there is time yet for a cup of coffee dashed with brandy—a cheroot, and then away.'

'The bugles are sounding, and there go the trumpets of the Hussars and Lancers blowing "boot and saddle."'

Disdaining the use of a regulation sword, which he stigmatised as an 'army tailor's blunt knife,' Colonel Spatterdash rode with an enormous tulwar by his side—a weapon once wielded by the great rebel Tantia Topee—one literally for slicing, and having such an edge that he might have shaved with it. He was in high spirits, and being still practically under the influence of his potations overnight, was humming the song of 'The Sepoy Grenadiers'—

'The spirits of our sires,
    Who gathered such renown
From clouds of battle fires,
    With stern delight look down,

'To Delhi and to Deeg they point,
    Those stars of other years;
And bid us still uphold the fame
    Of the Sepoy Grenadiers!'

'I'm not likely to die from "waste of nervous tissue," as the doctors call it, whatever the devil it may be,' he added, as he unsheathed his tulwar, that flashed in the paling starlight; 'we'll have a burra khana' (i.e., big dinner) 'when we come back, after polishing off these Mohmund fellows.'

'At least all who are able to partake of it.'

'Don't be gloomy, Colville; d—n it, I never am.'

The force for this expedition was made up of detachments from the column; there were some of the Rifles, with some of the Ghoorkas, 1st Sikhs, and 20th Punjaub Infantry, one hundred of the 10th Hussars under Captain St. Quintin, and one hundred of the 11th Bengal Lancers, in blue uniforms faced with red, under Major Princep. De Latour's Hazara Mountain Battery came clattering up, and two Royal Horse Artillery guns, which latter, with a small force, proceeded at once on observation down the right bank of the Cabul river, in case any of the Mohmunds might have taken post in that direction.

At half-past four in the morning the whole force—not much over a thousand men—after forming in silence and as quickly as possible, without further sound of drum or bugle, moved off, and, with St. Quintin's hussars in the van, crossed the river by the new bridge erected by our Royal Engineers, and advanced into the dark country beyond, where the only sounds heard were the wails of an occasional jackal, replied to by those of a pack of his fourfooted brethren.

In galloping from point to point, when the troops were forming under arms and then in columns of march, giving the general's last orders or directions, Colville had not much time for abstract reflection, yet a certain idea did occur to him, and he muttered, with a glow of the purest satisfaction,

'If I fall to-day or any other day, thank God I have made all square for my dear girl and her sister, too.'

This referred to a secret visit paid by him to Lincoln's Inn 'anent' codicils to his will the day before he left London; and now he recalled with astonishment the time when he either disliked these unknown cousins or forgot that they existed.

Though Mohammed, Khan of Lalpura and chief of the Mohmunds, had made complete submission apparently to Sir Louis Cavagnari at Dakka, in the preceding year, it did not prevent his people from opposing us now in arms, like many other mountain tribes.

After the hoofs of the cavalry and wheels of the artillery had made the planks of the trestle-bridge resound, silence again fell on the column; and when the moon came out in its oriental splendour, amid some weird, windy, and fast-flying clouds, there was light enough to see the column distinctly.

The sheeny bayonets of the infantry and the spearheads of the lancers (denuded pro temp. of their fluttering banneroles) glittered brightly, as did the sword-blades of all the officers; and our cavalry are generally so gaily appointed that, when the 10th Hussars went cantering to the front, the flashes of light reflected from their accoutrements, if they added to the picturesque, also added to the peril of the occasion, if any scouting Mohmunds were about, as this alone would have revealed the advance of the force, which from its sombre costume would have been, otherwise, almost invisible—but the tropical white helmets were always prominent objects amid the gloom.

At this time, all our troops in Afghanistan wore Cashmere putties, or leg-bandages, made of strips of woollen cloth, two yards and a half long, with a tape stitched on at the end. They were worn round the calf of the leg from the ankle to the knee, where the tape secured them. For cavalry and infantry alike they were a useful and warm addition to the clothing in cold weather; and there was but one objection—the time necessary for binding them on.

Some natives acted as guides, and in the cold moonlight the cavalry and artillery went clattering over rough stones, and more than one of the former fell from his horse, and of the latter off the limber-seats, as some sudden and deceitful ditch or water channel had to be crossed. The enemy was in front; no one knew precisely when or where he might be fallen on, and this added to the zest and excitement of the time and occasion.

The orders of the cavalry were to spur on in front; to get in between the Mohmunds and the hills, for the purpose of cutting off their retreat; and a picturesque sight were the Hussars and Lancers, as they dashed through the Kunar River (which joins the Cabul about five miles from Jellalabad), in its descent from Shigar, and flashes of light came from their glancing accoutrements as they vanished away from the sight of the infantry in the gloom ahead, when a cloud passed over the face of the moon.

Next came the infantry splashing through the Kunar, which rose to the men's waist-belts, and was broad at the point where it was crossed; and a bath such as it gave was not a desirable beginning in a cold morning with the work they had in hand.

At one place the route lay over what seemed to have been an old Mohammedan burial-ground. Coffins are not used in the East, the body being simply rolled up in a sheet, and placed in the grave with only a foot or two of earth spread over it. Into these receptacles the wheels of the guns stuck fast in succession, compelling the gunners to quit the limber-seats and drag them out, crushing and grinding the human bones beneath, and causing an expression of much rough language unfitted for ears polite. If the superstition of the Afghans, who greatly venerate burial places, which they call 'Cities of the Silent,' be true, that the ghosts of the dead sit at the head of their own graves, invisible to mortal eyes, enjoying the odours of the flowers planted there, the said ghosts must have been somewhat scared by the row Her Majesty's gunners made till they got their seven-pounders free from this succession of traps, and once more on solid ground; and also by old Spatterdash, who was impatient to get his Sepoys forward, and swore in English and Hindostanee.

Though the Kunar river, which takes its rise near the great Pamir Steppe and Bam-i-Duniah, or 'the Roof of the World,' was left in the rear, the troops had to splash through several tributaries of it ere they obtained higher ground, and then they began to look upon scenery wild and mighty, rugged and uncultured, where wolves peopled the forest, the elk and deer haunted the brook, and the crane and the stork hovered about the watercourses, and over all, desolate and savage, towered the mountains of Shigar, many thousands of feet in height.

Sometimes the route lay between groves of dark poplars, of pale green willows, or dwarf palm, sunk amid which the tributaries of the Kunar flowed like streaks of silver; and sometimes between vegetation familiar to the British eye—the ash, the oak, the chestnut, and hawthorn, though mingling with the cedar, the olive, and fig.

Major Louis Cavaguari, a handsome dark-complexioned man, whom Colville now saw for the first time, came riding up and joined the staff, accompanied by a brilliantly attired and accoutred Afghan horseman, whom he introduced as the Khan of Besoot, from whom much useful information could be gathered, among others that a range of hills in front was full of the enemy under a fanatic named Moollah Khalil.

The Ghoorkas, who were leading, were now ordered to seek cover as soon as they had left in rear a village near these hills, while the cavalry swung round to take these in flank or cut off the retreat of the enemy, and with that force went Colville with a message from the general.

While galloping on to overtake them he could see the files who were to skirmish dart out in extended order with unslung carbines, and soon the cracking of exchanged shots quickened every pulse as they were heard among the hills.

'Push forward the mountain battery!' was now the general's order.

It was galloped to the south side of a projecting ridge, while old Spatterdash, with some of the Punjaub infantry, began to scale its rocky crest. There the Mohmunds were in position, but so dingily were they attired, or so much did the colour of their costume blend with that of the rocks and trees, that, though not a single man of them could as yet be separately distinguished, the existence of their masses was known by the flashing of their arms in the sunshine, or by the fluttering out of a red or green village banner against the sky-line.

While measures were thus being taken to have them on the flank and an attack was delivered in front, De Latour got his mountain guns ready for action, and sent a shell at a thousand yards' range whistling through the air. Curving in its course, it fell and burst among them high up on the ridge, scattering death and mutilation. Another and another fell, and then, as the arms ceased to glitter, it was known that the Mohmunds were falling back.

Again the flashing of their weapons in the sunshine, and the jets of white smoke from their long juzails, levelled over bank and rock, but fired at long and almost useless distances, announced a rally or pause in their retreat, the line of which lay along a plain that extended away to the eastward, and onward through that space and clouds of rising dust swept the cavalry, followed by the infantry at the double.

The skirmishers of Redhaven's troop having, in the ardour of pursuit, advanced too far into a dell, became suddenly exposed to a galling fire, which emptied more than one saddle; and Colville dashed forward with orders for their recall.

The trumpet sounded the 'retire,' and it was obeyed by all but one hussar, who continued to load and fire, while the juzail balls whistled about him, and knocked up jets of sand about his horse's hoofs.

'Sound again!' said Lieutenant Redhaven to the trumpeter, who sat with the bell of the trumpet planted on his thigh.

Again he blew, but in vain.

'He is too far—he does not hear it—the fellow will be lost!'

'Oh, he hears it well enough, sir,' replied the trumpeter; 'but just now he pretends to be deaf.'

'Deaf!—what the devil does he mean? To throw his life away?'

'Looks like it, from what I have seen of him more than once.'

'He is a brave but reckless fool!' exclaimed Redhaven, impetuously, as he was now seen engaged with four Afghan horsemen, after having slung his carbine, and drawn his sword; and by this time Colville, full of pity and admiration, inspired also by the passing remarks of the trumpeter, was already on the spur to succour him.

'Allow me, sir, that officer can't go alone; besides, the poor fellow is my own comrade,' said a hussar, who, without waiting for Redhaven's consent, dashed the spurs into his horse, settled himself well down on the saddle, and in less than a minute was among the cloud of dust, where Colville and the other hussar were in close mêlée with the four Afghans, one of whom was the Moollah Khalil, who was armed, not with a tulwar, but an enormous maul, furnished with a round knob of gilt metal.

'Allah Ackbar, Mohammed resool illa,' he was shrieking, with blazing eyes, as he goaded his horse in the fray, and laid about him like a madman, and by one blow brained or stunned the horse of the skirmisher whose rashness had brought this combat about, and during which the juzailchees had ceased firing, lest they might hit their own leader.

Ere the hussar could free himself from his stirrups the maul was about to descend on his head, when a thrust from Colville's sword, delivered under the right arm, pierced the lungs of Moollah Khalil, who fell to rise no more, and, protecting the hussar by a great circular sweep of his sword, Colville dragged him up by his bridle hand, and mounted him on the Moollah's horse. His follower had now disposed of a second Afghan just as his horse was shot under him, and the two others, terrified by the fall of the Moollah, fled at a gallop, on which the juzailchees resumed firing, and the shot whistled and whirred past Colville and his companions.

'Quick—run as best you can,' said he, putting his horse to a trot, but loth to leave the two soldiers behind.

A wailing cry escaped one as a shot evidently struck him, and Colville paused by checking his bridle. The man was mortally wounded and ghastly pale, yet he walked on for some thirty paces, erect and steadily, his eyes fixed on vacancy; then he paused, and fell dead on his face.

'Poor Sam Surcingle!' exclaimed the other, and at that moment Colville also dropped from his saddle, struck by a ball in the left ribs.

Luckily it was a spent one, and only knocked the breath out of him; but not a moment was to be lost, as a few of the Mohmund juzailchees were creeping back, filled with the maddest rage at the death of their fanatic leader, who had believed his life to be charmed.

The hussar dragged Colville up, and almost lifted him into the saddle, and taking the bridle applied one spur to both horses, and brought the officer into the lines faint, worn, and with his mouth full of blood.

When safe out of fire Colville dismounted near a pool covered with crimson water-lilies—the sacred lotus of Brahma—and then the hussar whose life he had saved, and who had succoured him in return, opened his blue patrol jacket and proceeded, after bathing his face and giving him a draught from the pool, to examine his hurts with a skilful hand.

'Not a rib broken, sir, thank God' said he; 'only a contusion, and the consequent discolouration will pass away in a few days. I haven't forgotten my Quain and Turner.'

'Robert Wodrow!' exclaimed Colville, recognising for the first time the ex-medical student.

'Yes, Captain Colville—Robert Wodrow it is,' replied the other, with a sad smile, as he proffered his brandy-flask.

'Thanks—I have my own,' said Colville, struggling into a sitting position. 'Mary and Ellinor Wellwood told me of the step you had taken—a very rash one I think it—when you failed in your studies through the mischief wrought you by that scoundrel Sleath.'

'So you met them?'

'Yes—and left them well and every way, I hope, happy.'

'It is an unexpected pleasure to see you here, sir.'

'My poor fellow, if I can befriend you, I shall, believe me,' said Colville, shaking Robert's hand.

'Thank you, Captain Colville; my officers and comrades like me already, thank God; and I am now a corporal.'

'They are right who assert that there is nothing certain but the unexpected,' said Colville, laughing, yet wincing the while with pain; 'and this meeting with you has been most unexpected by me.'

'But not by me, sir.'

'How so?'

'I have seen you in and about Jellalabad for days and weeks past.'

'And why did you not speak to me?'

'I am not now what I was—when hoping to be a graduate of the Edinburgh University, but a poor hussar—un simple soldat.'

'Simple, indeed, to throw your chances in life away thus—and even your life too, as you so nearly did a few minutes ago.'

'I had none left—none that I cared for,' said Robert, hoarsely.

While this conversation was taking place, the infantry and artillery had halted, and the brigadier, with all the cavalry, had pushed on in pursuit of the fugitive Mohmunds as far as a place called Gurdao, in a gorge, where the Cabul river flows out of the valley of Jellalabad.

On an islet in the river there are the remains of an old Buddhist monastery, surrounded by a tope of hoary trees. For here had once been the worship of Buddha—a worship which, though now almost banished from India, has spread over countries of an almost wider area, and is usually ranked as the ninth avatar of Vishnu.

Here a few of the Mohmunds made their last stand, till the best cavalry marksmen picked them off with their carbines, and the whole troops began a retrograde movement towards Jellalabad.

Colville was once more in his saddle, and, by Redhaven's permission, Robert Wodrow attended to him on the march.

'I wish I understood the law of crises,' says the author of Altiora Peto. 'I suppose it has an intimate connection with that other mysterious problem, the law of chances ... I have always had a theory,' he adds, 'that from time to time our lives culminate to crises. Then the crisis bursts, and we begin again, and slowly or rapidly, as the case may be, culminate to another crisis.'

Well, here was a crisis and something more in connection with the law of chances. The two men who loved the two sisters, Mary and Ellinor Wellwood, under circumstances and with success so different, by the birks of Invermay, were now face to face and together in that far-away land of peril.

After hearing Colville's little narrative of what had transpired before he left London, Robert Wodrow looked at him for a time in silence, and thought how different were their fates and probable future in the world.

Colville had hope and wealth, he (Wodrow) neither, and life seemed so valueless; yet a couple of Afghan bullets might solve all difficulties for both of them!

While the artillery made a detour to avoid the pitfalls of the Mohammedan burial-place, Wodrow was remarking to the officer by whose side he rode,

'It would seem, Captain Colville, that, as some writer says of the romance of life, ours seems to be overtaking us pretty quickly.'

'Romance, do you call it?'

'Bitterness, in my case, would be nearer the truth. I am a broken and ruined man,' said the other, after a pause. 'Ellinor took the last ray of sunshine out of my life. She told me plainly that she could not marry a poor man for the world, nor wait till he became rich—a knowledge that only came to her after Sir Redmond Sleath found his way to Birkwoodbrae. She was wiser, perhaps, but her wisdom, poor girl, brought her nothing—nothing! My love was only an ideal after all, Captain Colville; and though life does not seem to me worth living, it must be lived—till ended—after all.'

Colville made no reply, but proffered his cigar-case to the speaker, who accepted a cigar with a courteous bow and blush of pleasure; the very act was a kindly recognition that they had once been equals, and were still friends.

'You must quit this sort of thing, Wodrow, and go back to your studies at Edinburgh,' said Colville; 'back to Quain and Turner, to Balfour's Botany, Jackson's Materia Medica, and all the rest of it. If you want money for that or anything else, consider me your banker.'

But Robert Wodrow shook his head with an air of decision. 'Sir, I thank you from my heart's core, but no, Captain Colville—never again.'

'Tuts; we'll talk about all this another time,' said Colville, kindly, hoping to bring him to a right way of thinking and acting.

Yet while he declined all proffers of assistance, Robert Wodrow's mind was full of thoughts—soft, subduing, and kindly thoughts—of his reverend father, his mother so sweet and meek, so abiding and confiding in the will and goodness of God, and the old sequestered manse embowered among the bonnie birks of Invermay—the manse of Kirktoun-Mailler.

By midnight the returned expedition marched into the lines of the camp at Jellalabad.

'You have acted bravely to-day, Captain Colville,' said the brigadier, shaking his hand as the troops were dismissed to their tents; 'and so sure as the stars look down on us you shall have your V.C. for saving the rash hussar and killing the Moollah Khalil. I wish you had polished off Mohammed Shah, too, while you were about it.'

'Who is he?' asked Colville, to whom the name seemed somehow familiar.

'One of the sirdars of the Ameer, and a very distinguished one, now with the Mohmunds.'

'By Jove! that was the fellow who pretended to be a hadji, and whom I had for a night in the Bala Hissar—in the citadel actually.'

'A lesson for you to be more careful and less hospitable in future,' said the brigadier, laughing.

Colville was duly complimented in general orders, and weeks after the latter was read and duly appreciated by one who then was—far, far away!

CHAPTER XIV.

IN THE LUGHMAN VALLEY.

The death of the Ameer, and succession of his son, Yakoub Khan, were now confirmed beyond all doubt at Jellalabad; but troubles and skirmishes seemed to be on the increase, and no man's life was safe.

In the country of the Shinwarris, a district on the Afghan frontier, a surveying party was attacked near Maidonak, though escorted by old Spatterdash and his Punjaub Infantry. To the natives it seemed that knocking little pegs into the ground, sticking up little flags, and taking the altitude of heights by a theodolite could only be the blackest sorcery. Other instruments which were looked through in a mysterious manner, with the notes made on paper, were all deemed damnable charms, and indications of talismanic power, and the sirdar named Mahmoud Shah, who was roving in that quarter, together with Abdullah Mir, another adherent of Yakoub Khan, reminded the people—as all Muslims believe firmly in magic—of the evil wrought by the wicked genie Sacar, the inveterate foe of Solomon, of Eblis or Degial, who, according to the Koran, was that enemy of the human race who accomplished the downfall of Adam, and much more nonsense to the same purpose; so the surveying party were furiously attacked by a band of fanatics, armed with tulwar, dagger, and juzail, in a solitary place near the base of the Suffaidh Koh.

In the conflict that ensued a non-commissioned officer was killed, a captain of the Royal Engineers wounded perilously by the blade of a charah, a subaltern of native infantry received a ball through his shoulder, and several Sikhs were killed; but Spatterdash laid about him vigorously with his tulwar, split one or two heads through the long floating loongees like pumpkins, and brought the party off; after which General Tytler, at Maidonak and Girda, burned the two villages, blew up seven fortified towers, and seized hostages, to be kept in irons till a heavy fine was paid.

In due time Colville got his V.C. for the affair with the Mohmunds, and Robert Wodrow was recommended for promotion, and, as the coming general war in the heart of Afghanistan was likely to make many a vacancy, if spared, he was sure to get it.

In consequence of the skirmish at Maidonak and threatened attacks by the hostile tribesmen in the vicinity of Jellalabad and the Lughman Valley, early in March an expedition was ordered into the latter quarter, under Major-General Jenkins, and with it Colville went on the staff. It proved a very successful movement, with many important political consequences.

The first news he heard of it was after a supper in old Spatterdash's bungalow.

'Turn in if you can, lads,' said he, when the cantonment ghurries clanged midnight; 'and I must have a nap, too. We get under arms before daylight to-morrow.'

'For what?' asked Colville.

'To fight, of course. Have you not seen the general orders?'

'No—I was at polo all afternoon with the 10th. But to fight—where?'

'That depends upon where we find the enemy, who are gathering as usual for mischief; so let us have a nightcap of brandy-pawnee, and then to roost.'

Colville stretched himself in a corner of the bungalow, and was soon in the Land of Nod. 'The soldier off duty and the sailor when his watch is over have the faculty for getting snatches of sleep at a moment's notice, which is denied to most other mortals, and a blessed gift it is.'

An hour before dawn the bugles sounded, and the troops detailed for the expedition fell in.

It was then known that the destination of the force was the Lughman Valley, where the sirdar Mahmoud Shah was the active and ruling spirit.

Considerable annoyance and mortification were felt by Colville at the frequently recurring mention of this personage's name, the Hadji spy in Jellalabad whom he had succoured and protected, a circumstance for which he had been much quizzed and 'chaffed,' for, as Lever has it, 'a little bit of fun goes a long way in the army.'

'A fine fellow to have fostered, Colville,' said Colonel Spatterdash, as he mounted; 'd—n him, he is worse than a Peshawur scorpion, and we all know what it is, for size and venom.'

While the infantry rolls were called, the companies proved, and the battalions formed, the battery of artillery were also getting in order; the horses were champing their bits, pawing the ground, and laying back their ears as if impatient for the trumpet call. The gunners stood by them—one examining the harness finally to see that all was right, another altering his stirrup-leathers by a hole or two, a third adjusting a comrade's accoutrements, a fourth grasping the bow of his saddle ready to mount at the blast of the trumpet, after which he knew his horse would no longer remain still; while the trumpeter stood near the commanding officer, breathing into the mouthpiece of his brass instrument, occasionally as if to keep it ready for sounding.

Anon the men are mounted or on the limber-seats; the trumpet rings out, the word march is given; the drivers ease the reins and close their legs to the riding horses, throwing their whips gently over the necks of the off-horses so as to ensure their starting together; and it is a rule in artillery that the spurs are for the ridden horse, the whip for the off one, and to be applied over the shoulder or neck, but never in the rear of the pad.

So the guns went clattering to the front, and the infantry broke into columns of march, with a cavalry advance-guard, just as the sun began to lighten the summit of the Suffaidh Koh and other snow-clad mountains.

The Lughman Valley lies north of Jellalabad, and is overlooked by the Himalayas, though extending to the lower ridges of the Hindoo Koosh, while Kaffiristan borders it on the east.

Colville, of course, rode with the staff, and the ill-fated Louis Cavagnari accompanied it.

Many narrow valleys, with torrents traversing their boulder-strewn beds, and sides covered with beautiful vegetation, were passed in succession, with several villages, each marked by an enormous chunar or Oriental plane—perhaps by two or three placed near each other for shade, where the Moollah might bring forth his Koran, and recite it for the information of others.

As the troops proceeded the rocks around them seemed to grow darker and darker, owing to the lead ore among them, while enormous boulders of every kind of stone were strewn about far away from their original beds out of which the torrents of ages past had torn them.

Shaggy goats and broad-tailed doombas, or Persian sheep, were seen grazing near the villages, where at first the people came forth peacefully to gaze with wonder upon the Feringhees. No untoward event occurred, till a tribesman drew near where a party of hussars were halted, carrying a sharp axe concealed behind his back, and evidently bent on mischief, as he was known by his white dress to be a Ghazi, or fanatic devoted to death.

With his weapon, he was about to aim a blow that must have proved a deadly one on an unsuspecting corporal, when, quick as thought, Robert Wodrow, who had his sword drawn, clove his head to the teeth.

This was a signal for strife. Alarm fires soon began to shoot up redly on several eminences; yells and shouts came upon the mountain wind from armed parties mustering fast among the rocks and eyries and ere long a sputtering fire of juzails, or native rifles, was opened on the column, and men began to drop dead or limp about wounded.

Out of these lofty places the tribesmen were shelled, but not without difficulty, and ultimately driven by the rifle-fire of our skirmishers into a narrow, rocky defile, which proved a kind of natural cul-de-sac, out of which there was little or no exit; and there into the wedged mass, shell after shell at a thousand yards went smoking and whistling till it plumped and exploded among them with terrible effect; but it was necessary to teach these treacherous people a lesson, and a severe one it proved.

Four days the expedition remained in the Lughman Valley, and on the fourth, when passing on the downward route the place where the conflict had ensued, and where rifle and shell fire had decimated the enemy, Colville, who for a considerable time past had been somewhat unused to strife and slaughter, looked with a kind of horror upon the scene around him.

Save the vultures and carrion crows no living creature had ventured to approach the gorge where the dead, and dying yet lay—a picture of human anguish and human passions indescribable.

The bodies of the torn and mutilated lay thickly there, either stark and stiff in the refuge of death, or writhing and struggling, as if to escape the doom of those beside them.

If this scene seemed dreadful by day, more dreadful and ghastly did it seem to those in the rear of the column, who passed it after nightfall, and the moon shed its cold light over the Katcha mountains, and the rear-guard of Hussars, under Redhaven, had to pick their way amid bodies lying half-naked, in every conceivable position, with dark and bloody faces on the broad and ghastly grin, distorted and battered limbs, with clenched hands and staring open eyes; while some of the dead sat bolt upright against rocks and boulders, with jaws dropped, and stiffened fingers grimly pointing at vacancy.

The next expedition towards the Lughman Valley was marked by a terrible disaster, the story of which went through the length and breadth of the British Isles.

CHAPTER XV.

THE FANCY BALL.

From such a scene as that in the Lughman Valley we gladly turn to one of a very different kind.

It was an evening of the early days of April, when the elms begin to show their half-developed foliage, the buds of the oak are red, and the sprays of the beech gleam like emeralds against the blue sky, and the laburnum is clothed in green and gold, that Mary and Ellinor Wellwood sat in a beautiful flower garden while idling over some 'crewel work,' and watching a glorious sunset as it shone on the broad waters of the Elbe.

We have said that for change of air and of scene Mrs. Deroubigne, who acted to them as a second mother, had taken them with her to the Continent, and, after wandering through France and Holland, they now found themselves installed in a pretty villa near Altona, about two miles from the gay, busy, and hospitable city of Hamburg, whose merchants are so famous for the excellence of their dinners, and the splendour of their entertainments.

It was a lovely spring evening; the Elbe, studded with shipping under sail or steam, was rolling in light, its blue blending into crimson; and beyond it lay the low, green hills of Hanover, now no longer a petty kingdom, but an integral portion of the great German empire.

The sun was setting, and such a sunset!

Separated from Hamburg only by a space called the Field of the Holy Ghost, where daily the spike-helmeted Prussian troops could be seen at drill, the wharves and warehouses of Altona join those of the city, as they stretch along the waterside with stately rows of pale green poplars behind them.

Beyond the last of these, in a little wooded creek, and on the summit of a green bank overlooking the river, stood the charming little villa occupied temporarily by Mrs. Deroubigne, from the windows of which the great panorama of the Hansetown was visible, with the lofty red-brick tower of St. Michael's Kirk (a hundred feet higher than the dome of St. Paul's at London), bathed in ruddy gold, and casting its mighty shadow half-way to Altona; and, as the evening sky grew redder, the spires of St. Katharine and St. Nicholai grew redder too; and now, impressed by the beauty of the evening and of the scene, the influence of the season and the soft purity of the ambient air, the two girls, in the new happiness of their hearts, sang together a duet from 'Il Flauto Magico,' of Mozart, all unaware that a young Prussian officer—a smart uhlan, in bright green uniform—was lingering admiringly near them.

We need scarcely mention, though Hamburg is famous for the beauty of its women, the officers of the garrison, the uhlans, and the Hanoverian infantry in the Dammthor Barracks always welcomed the appearance of the two 'charming English meeses' and their handsome chaperone at the consul's balls, the opera, the fêtes in the Botanischer Garten, or when the bands played in the fashionable Jungfernstieg (or Maiden's Walk), the beautiful tree-shaded promenade by the side of the Alster, which is always covered with gaily-painted pleasure-boats.

These amusements, with fancy work, music, and novels—Tauchnitz editions, of course—made the sweet spring days pass quickly with Mary and Ellinor in that gay city, where, it is said, that in summer the inhabitants appear to work all day and amuse themselves all night.

Before their departure to the Continent, great had been the astonishment of Lady Dunkeld and the fair Blanche Galloway when they heard of the near relationship of Colville to the sisters, of his engagement to Mary, and that they were to be chaperoned by Mrs. Deroubigne till the marriage came to pass.

'The marriage!' How Blanche elevated her eyebrows and shrugged her shoulders. It was bitter to lose thus the future Lord Colville of Ochiltree.

Both those aristocratic ladies would fain have extended their patronage and countenance to the sisters now; but, aware of their past malevolence, Mary and Ellinor, though far from revengeful, steadily declined all intercourse with them. Nor did Mrs. Deroubigne attempt to control their actions or wishes in the matter. Thus a coldness amounting almost to a 'cut' ensued between her and the Dunkeld family.

Leslie Colville's last letter to Mary from Jellalabad had narrated the episode of his meeting with Robert Wodrow, and the mutual good services they had done each other; and Mary, who had read of the personal conflict in the war correspondent's news, felt her heart sink within her at the contemplation of the many and incessant perils her lover—her affianced husband—had to encounter.

And how often did Mary recall their parting, when he had held her face tenderly and caressingly between his hands while he gazed down into her tear-blinded eyes, so sweetly and so passionately, posed as they both were like the pair in 'the Huguenot' of Millais's picture; while she looked up to him as sweetly and as passionately too.

His departure had seemed to Mary but the beginning of the end. Yet who could foresee amid the terrible contingencies of war and climate what that end might be?

Thankful she felt as each day passed, and with it a portion of the time of separation; but who might know what that day had seen or brought forth far, far away among the wild mountains of Afghanistan? And so, with curious and persistent ingenuity, thoughtful and anxious fancy often tormented her.

Yet under different influences and happier auspices, and amid new scenes, both sisters regained the old glow of health and beauty they had possessed each in her own degree in former days at pleasant Birkwoodbrae.

Meanwhile with Ellinor, as the conviction of her own sudden selfishness and folly grew strong in her heart, and the now odious image of Sir Redmond Sleath faded out of it, the memory of Robert Wodrow and of other days took their place there; but what would that avail either of them now?

The sisters ceased their duet suddenly, when Jack the fox-terrier, who had been nestling against Mary's skirts, started up to greet with many a yelp of delight the young officer who fed him so often with biscuits and chocolate creams.

'Pardon my interrupting a song so sweet,' said he, in good English, 'but my purpose must be my excuse,' he added, with a military salute, for the Baron Rolandsburg—a visitor of Mrs. Deroubigne's—belonged to the Uhlans, and, like all Prussian officers, was seldom or never seen out of uniform, the green laced with gold of the dashing Lancers.

He was a fair-haired and handsome man, barely thirty years of age, and in his fifteenth year had the glory of being the first Prussian to enter Paris, for he it was who galloped his horse amid scowling and assembled thousands through the Arc de Triomphe after winning the iron cross at Sedan; and now he had brought 'for Madame Deroubigne' and her two young ladies, tickets for a most exclusive fancy ball, to be given in the Theatre of Hamburg, which is one of the largest in Germany; for, though there are many public ball-rooms in that pleasure-loving city, they are never patronised by the upper classes.

The baron had been the sisters' escort to all 'the lions' of Hamburg—to the churches, the stately and crowded Börse, to Rœdings Museum, the tomb of Klopstock, the great garden kept by a Scotsman at Wandsbeck, overlooked by the house of Tycho Brahe, and they had lingered again and again on the summit of the Stintfang, from whence there is such an extensive view of the harbour, the Elbe, and the opposite coast of Hanover, and his hand had often assisted Ellinor in her sketches of the Vierlanders in their picturesque costume and of their boats laden with glowing fruit, flowers, and vegetables.

Mrs. Deroubigne deemed there was no harm in all this. It amused the girls, drew them from their own sad thoughts, and so far as she could see the admiration and attention of the young baron were pretty equally divided between them, or if he had a preference it was for Mary, as it seemed ere long.

But the tickets for the fancy ball—a ball of a kind so peculiarly flattering to female vanity and taste in costume and so forth—seemed to crown all his previous good offices and kindness, and they accepted them with a genuine delight that quite flattered him.

Bouquets (selected by those pretty Vierlander flower girls, whose picturesque caps and embroidered bodices make them quite a feature in Hamburg), gloves, music, even a fan or two, had come from the Baron Rolandsburg, but always at appropriate times, with reference to a stall at the opera or an afternoon dance.

There was no reason why Mary should not accept such gifts; yet she would rather that they did not come, as their acceptance seemed a kind of treason to him who was then so far, far away.

For some days their fancy dresses were an all engrossing source of thought and topic with the girls and their chaperone; but, after many changes of mind, costumes of the reign of Mary Stuart were selected by them, Mary choosing blue, slashed and trimmed with white, as suited to her blonde complexion, and Ellinor rose colour, trimmed and slashed with black, as suited to her dark hair and hazel eyes, and wonderfully handsome and piquante they looked.

On the forenoon of the ball the baron arrived with three magnificent bouquets and two beautiful fans for the sisters—the best that could be obtained in the Neuer Wall.

'How charming—how kind!' exclaimed both, blushing with pleasure.

'For our dance to-night,' said Rolandsburg, in his most insinuating tone, to Mary, 'how many waltzes are you to give me?' he asked, in a lower voice.

'How many do you want?' asked Mary, coquettishly.

'I would like them all of course—save those I may have with Miss Ellinor; but that is too much to expect.'

As all this implied more than words, Mary appeared not to hear, and addressed Mrs. Deroubigne.

In due time they were attired, and drove through the brilliantly lighted streets to the Stadt Theatre in the Dammthor Strasse, where the Burgher Guard, in quaint uniforms, were under arms to receive the burgomasters and four Syndics of the city, who wear on state occasions high-crowned hats and black velvet cloaks, with ruffs and swords; and there, about the entrances, were a crowd of blooming Vierlander flower-girls, selling bouquets and button-holes, their quaint hats or gold-embroidered caps, their bodices of crimson or black, covered with gold-broidery, and their short blue skirts, making each a picture.

'I shall dance with no one else but you to-night,' said the uhlan, in his softest tone, to Mary.

'No one else?' said she.

'Save your sister.'

'Our poor uhlan is evidently playing with edged tools, Mary,' said Mrs. Deroubigne, with a smile, while the baron was intently pencilling on their programmes and his own.

The stage and floored pit of the theatre, which had been converted into one vast, brilliantly lighted and gaily decorated hall, was filling fast with guests in every real and fanciful costume that can be conceived, and already the great orchestra in their places were playing a kind of overture; but their music was to be alternated by the great brass band of the uhlans; and, though many handsome, even rarely beautiful girls were present, Mary and Ellinor Wellwood were remarked amid them all.

'Schön! schön!' (beautiful, beautiful) muttered many, as they passed to their appointed place with Mrs. Deroubigne.

'En verité!' exclaimed a gallant little French consul; 'ces dames sont charmantes!'

But the ball itself has less to do with our story than what it preluded.

Many of the dresses were gorgeous in texture and decoration—silk, velvet, gold and silver jewellery, and the richest lace, fairy-like in delicacy of fashion and tint, and when the dancers in hundreds flew round in the waltz it seemed a glimpse of the land of Elphin.

The music was divine, and Mary felt every nerve and fibre of her frame respond to it as she sped round with slippered feet over the well-waxed floor on the arm of Rolandsburg, whose step and time suited hers to perfection.

There were beautiful Jewish matrons from the fashionable mansions on the Alster Damm, with broods of black-eyed and equally beautiful daughters; for the Jewish ladies of Hamburg, in style, beauty, and delicacy of feature, excel all others of their race; but the blonde beauties of Holstein and North Germany far exceeded them in numbers and glow of complexion.

Off the dancing-hall were artificial conservatories and refreshment-rooms for ice-cream, jelly, and flirtation, where servants were in attendance clad like Turks, with turbans and slippers, pistols and yataghans, and where, with a sound like file-firing, the champagne corks flew up to the gilded ceilings.

Amid the dazzling scene, as Mary paused in a waltz, panting, palpitating, and blushing to see her own reflection in a mirror, as she almost clung to the arm of the baron in his green uhlan uniform, and found herself the object of so much attention and admiration, her mind reverted with a kind of dull and painful wonder to the past days of their obscure abode in frowsy Paddington; to her struggles for employment, and her lonely wanderings in unfamiliar streets, where often her beauty subjected her to such observation and insolent annoyance that often she longed to be old and ugly; and when her chief hope had been to fill the place of governess to some one's children—well-bred or ill-bred, yet not without a faint vision of future good fortune, position, and admiration—perhaps even riches; she was too young to be without such fancies and hopes.

Ellinor thought she would never forget the splendours and enjoyments of the fancy dress ball; in all its features and details it was so new to her, and from a subsequent event she was fated to remember it long.

The baron, always attentive and full of empressement, was enchanted to be the privileged cavalier to two such English belles.

Mary, in her piquant Mary Stuart cap, with a little ruff round her delicate neck, her sleeves puffed and slashed, her peaked bodice, all blue satin, with seed pearls, quite dazzled him, and matured the passion for her that was growing in his heart; and at last, in the intervals of the dances, though he yielded her with undisguised reluctance to other uhlans, dragoons, and gunners, who crowded about her, programme in hand, he ventured to speak on the subject—not to her, but to Mrs. Deroubigne, and thus spared her some pain and confusion.

'Madame,' said he, while conducting her to a refreshment-room, 'you evidently love these two young ladies as if they were your own daughters!'

'I do indeed—and they might have been,' was the somewhat enigmatical reply of Mrs. Deroubigne, with one of her bright sweet smiles.

'Ah! who would not love them, the blue-eyed one especially.'

'Mary?'

'Yes, madame. I thought generally that love only existed in plays and novels.'

'And when were you undeceived?'

'When first I knew her.'

'Baron, you must dismiss such thoughts,' said Mrs. Deroubigne, with some dismay.

'Why, madame?' he asked, smiling.

'The young lady is engaged.'

'Engaged—is that betrothed?'

'Yes.'

His countenance changed instantly.

'To an officer—a dear friend of mine—now in Afghanistan.'

'In Afghanistan!' he repeated, angrily; 'a fiancé there is next to no fiancé at all, for a bullet may—nay,' said he, pausing, 'this thought is ungenerous of me, and I would not like another to think thus of Rolandsburg. Gott in Himmel, how unlucky I am!'

'I am so sorry to hear all this.'

'So am I—so am I,' exclaimed the baron, pulling his long fair moustaches, for a betrothal in Germany gives a young girl a kind of wife-like sanctity among the homely and domestic Teutonic people; and Mrs. Deroubigne, who dearly loved the romantic, felt for him; the young man's hopes had been cruelly crushed at the very moment when he thought them brightest.

'One cannot have everything they want—it is not given to anyone on earth to be perfectly happy, I suppose,' said he, with a sigh, and there was a sadness, with a ring of sincerity, in his voice that certainly touched Mrs. Deroubigne.

'Have you spoken of love to her?' whispered she, behind her fan; 'but I hope not!'

'No—I have never spoken—but she must have inferred what I felt,' replied the baron, who, like most German officers, spoke English well.

'Inferred it—I scarcely think so, with her mind so occupied with the thoughts of another.'

'But, any way, I think it does a girl good to know that a man loves her; and then, if the proverb be true about one love begetting another, she may incline her heart to him.'

'Not in this instance, baron.'

For Rolandsburg now the charm of the ball was over; the music sounded faint, the lights seemed dim, and he was glad when the great festivity ended, and he, after escorting the ladies to their carriage, took his way slowly through the streets to his barracks near the Dammthor Wall.

For his disappointment—and it was a sudden and sore one—he had no one but himself to blame, he felt, as Mary Wellwood had never given him the least encouragement to fling his heart away as he had done.

And now for the sequel to the night's adventures.

Talking gaily, as girls will talk after a ball, criticising costumes and partners, and comparing notes, Mary, Ellinor, and Mrs. Deroubigne reached home when day was beginning to dawn, and the blue waters of the Elbe were beginning to brighten. Ellinor, teasing and quizzing Mary about the baron, had been singing to her—

'Ilka lassie has her laddie,
But ne'er a one have I;'

and Mary, in hot haste, anxious to see the very latest news, threw open a London paper which had come over night, but, as she eagerly scanned it, a cry of dismay escaped her as she read a brief telegram:

'Terrible disaster to the 10th Hussars.—A whole squadron drowned in the Cabul River, and two officers, when attempting to save the life of Corporal Wodrow.'

The hearts of the sisters stood still as they read and re-read this startling notice.

The attempt to save Robert Wodrow had evidently been a failure—so he was gone!

Who had made the attempt and perished with him? Mary's agitated mind at once suggested Colville. Both girls felt completely stunned.

The returning and growing love—a love blended with great pity—that had been developing itself in Ellinor's heart for poor Robert Wodrow was now absorbed and swallowed up in a gush of bitterness and intense remorse at being the cause of his sorrowful and untimely fate.

How true it is that 'suffering is our most faithful friend; it is always returning. Often has it changed its dress, and even its face; but we can easily recognise it by its cordial and intimate embrace.'

And how was it, then, at the old ivy-clad manse of Kirktown-Mailler, where the same terrible telegram had gone like the dart of death?

There the blinds were drawn down, as if the hussar who had found his grave in the Cabul River was lying dead in the bed he had slept on in boyhood and manhood, and across which his mother now lay stretched in hopeless grief.

And a sad-eyed and sympathetic congregation watched the venerable minister when, with bent eyes, and slow, unsteady steps, he entered his pulpit next Sunday.

All knew the dire calamity that had befallen him, and one and all their kindly Scottish hearts bled for him, when his voice failed, his sermon escaped him, and stretching out his trembling hands on the pulpit cushion, he bent down his handsome old head upon them—a head now white as the thistledown—and begged his people to excuse him, 'as all night long he had been in the Valley of the Shadow of Death!'

Then his elders led him into the vestry, and those who saw him descending the stair of that pulpit, wherein he had ministered unto them faithfully for more than thirty years, never forgot the painful episode.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE 10TH HUSSARS.

And now to detail how the catastrophe referred to came about.

The evening of Monday, the 31st of March, saw Leslie Colville in his saddle, and busy conveying orders in the camp and cantonments of Jellalabad, where drum and bugle gave the notes of preparation for the field.

This was between five and six o'clock, when two columns were suddenly ordered out for another expedition towards the Lughman Valley.

One, to be led by Brigadier Gough, was to consist of seven hundred men furnished by the 17th and 27th regiments, three hundred native infantry, four Royal Horse Artillery guns under Major Stewart, and two squadrons of the dashing Guide Cavalry.

This column, according to the orders repeated by Colville, was to march out at one o'clock next morning.

'In what direction?' asked old Spatterdash and others.

'I know not,' replied Colville; 'but Lughman, I suppose, is the object in view with it, as well as the other column, under Brigadier Macpherson.'

The command of the latter consisted of three hundred Rifles, six hundred Ghoorkas and Punjaubees, with a mountain battery under Lieutenant E. J. de Lautour, of the Royal Artillery, who had served in the expedition of 1863 against the tribes on the North-West Frontier, some sappers, and a squadron each from the 10th Hussars and 11th Bengal Lancers, who, like the former corps, wear blue uniforms faced with red and laced with gold.

The latter column was to be in readiness to march at nine that evening, with four days' provisions in the haversacks.

The moon, in a sky flecked with clouds, was gleaming brightly on the Balla Hissar, the domes and walls of Jellalabad, though it was little more than a quarter old, as Macpherson's column got under arms; and the rolls were called, the ammunition served out, the inspection of saddlery and accoutrements was proceeded with.

Our soldiers always muster merrily for work such as they had in hand that night; and, before they were called to attention. Redhaven had on more than one occasion to speak almost sharply to Robert Wodrow, who was—for him, at least—unusually noisy and jubilant.

'Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die!' he heard him say.

'Can't make that countryman of yours out, Colville,' said the hussar-officer, as he scraped a vesta and lit a cigar. 'He is usually the most silent and taciturn fellow in the troop, and to-night he makes as much noise as all the Ghoorkas put together.'

'And that puzzles you?'

'Yes; he looks like a man with a past.'

'He has indeed a past history, poor fellow, a sorrowful and not a happy one.'

'Every broken-down fellow takes to the cavalry now,' grumbled Redhaven; 'but I was certain he has some secret by the expression of his eyes, and the inflections of his modulated voice at times.'

'Poor fellow!' said Colville again.

He knew, what Redhaven did not, that Robert Wodrow was often a prey to sad and bitter thoughts; that in the dreams of the night and of the day when asleep in the wet-flapping tent or the comfortless bivouac—when on solitary vidette duty, under the blazing Afghan sun, he saw oftener before him—not the fair face of her for whom he had sacrificed everything, and whom, he doubted not, would soon become the bride of another—but the face of his loving mother—a kind and happy old face—that ever beamed with love for him; and opposite her fancy saw his silver-haired old father, reading some good or musty volume—Wodrow's Analecta Scotica perhaps; and often from such visions of home he was roused by the trumpet blowing 'boot and saddle,' or the yell of an Afghan scout armed with juzail and charah.

As a Scotsman, Colville was superstitious enough to regret that at such a time the young fellow should show such exuberance of spirits as the foreboding of evil, and was in the act of urging his horse forward to accost him kindly, when the brigadier came on the ground, the component parts of the column were called to 'attention,' and in a few minutes after, the whole force was on the march, and, with the glittering of sword and bayonet blades, section after section quickly disappeared from the eyes of those who watched them in the cold wintry moonshine that had turned to diamonds the thick hoarfrost on every wall and tree; and the march began which was to prove the last to many in this life.

'The line of ground between Jellalabad and Cabul, so far as it is connected with India,' says a writer, 'is a line of tragedy and misfortune. That line of tragedy and misfortune may now be extended a couple of miles further to the east, for that will give very nearly the point where forty-six lives were on that Monday evening suddenly swept out of existence.'

The troops moved westward, the cavalry leading. The squadron of the 10th Hussars was under Captain D'Esterre Spottiswoode, that of the Bengal Lancers was under its own captain, and Major E. A. Wood of the first-named corps commanded the whole.

Guided by an Afghan mountaineer who had offered his services, and to whom Colville paid a high bribe therefor, the orders of the officers were to cross the Cabul river at a point where most unluckily a temporary bridge had shortly before been removed. On achieving that, they were to move up the left bank of the stream, to march through Besoot and Darunta, and enter the Lughman Valley, to which the infantry were moving by the Jellalabad side of the Cabul.

The guide, who was mounted on a powerful and wiry yaboo, or Cabul pony, was a singularly taciturn fellow, and Colville remarked a circumstance which soon became a painful memory, that by twisting the end of his loonghee, or head-dress, across the lower part of his face he effectually concealed his features, permitting little more than his keen, black, and glittering eyes to be seen, reminding him of the muffled men he had read of in old Scottish Border forays.

Macpherson's column had not been long gone when the troops at the camp of Jellalabad were roused and alarmed by numbers of cavalry horses, all riderless, galloping wildly among the tents, with their bridles trailing, and their saddles, valises, and trappings soaked in water.

'What has happened—what can have happened?' were the questions asked on every side.

No one could anticipate the catastrophe that had really occurred, as at that season the bed of the Cabul is not always full; but when the sun melts the accumulated snow in the Katcha range and other mountains it is not so. The water then rolls through many channels, and it was in anticipation of this that the wooden bridge had been removed to a point further up.

Where our cavalry were to cross at the Fort of Isaac, the stream now formed two branches; the first was thirty feet broad, with an average of only thirty inches of water, and the crossing was to be made under the light of a dim and fitful moon, at a point where an irrigation channel diverged at right angles from the stream. Beyond that point stood a kind of sandy islet covered with great boulders, and again beyond it lay a hundred and fifty feet of water; but as the line of this fatal ford was not straight, three hundred and fifty feet of water had to be traversed upon it, as the ford formed at one point an acute angle.

Led by the local guides, the squadron of Bengal Lancers crossed in safety, wheeling at the given point on the acute angle.

The mules of the squadron followed next, our hussars, now riding at ease, waiting till their turn came to cross; and to amuse the rest, one of them, the identical Toby Chace, who was one of Robert Wodrow's earliest comrades, and well known as a reckless fellow, began to sing a soldier's ditty, part of which ran thus:

'There's Bill Muggins left our village,
    Just as sound a man as I;
Now he goes about on crutches,
    With a single arm and eye.

'To be sure he's got a medal
    And some twenty pounds a year
For his health, and strength, and service,
    Government can't call that dear;
Not to reckon one leg shattered,
    Two ribs broken, one eye lost;
'Fore I went in such a venture,
    I should stop and count the cost.

'Lots o' glory, lots o' gammon——'

'Silence there—in front!' cried the commanding officer, and Colville, who had some undefinable suspicion of the hussar guide, placed himself near that personage, with his revolver case loose and at hand.

'Do not lose the direction, men,' cried an officer, 'but keep well up against the stream,' he added, knowing that when crossing thus there is always a tendency to edge lower down with the current.

The leading sections began to enter the stream, the rippling eddies of which went past them, tipped with silver by the pale moonlight; the rest followed closely, the guide directing, and erelong Colville and others found the water rising to their feet, then it rose as high as their knees, and was beginning to get higher, while the pony of the guide had quitted the angled line of the ford, and was swimming away to another point.

'Treachery,' thought Colville; at that moment the loonghee fell from the face of the guide, and he recognised Mahmoud Shah, the sirdir with the slashed cheek—Mahmoud, the hadji, whom he had saved from the Wahabees!

'This is getting awkward!' exclaimed Redhaven, 'there must be some mistake.'

'We are betrayed!' cried Colville.

He put his hand to his pistol-case, but too late, for now his horse rolled over, and with an exulting shriek in English of 'Pigs! dogs! Kaffirs!—drown and be damned! Eblis and hell await you! In vain will ye seek the Lord of the Daybreak!' cried the treacherous guide; then he reached the Jellalabad side in safety and vanished—pony and all.

All was confusion, consternation, and death now, for the water, flowing at the rate of nine miles an hour, had risen to the saddle bows and holsters of the Hussars, whose spirited horses, finding their footing gone, ignored the use of spur and bridle.

The line of the ford was lost now; the current pouring over it soon forced the horses downward into deeper water, sweeping the squadron away towards the swifter rapids, and in a mass of confusion our gallant Hussars, with their terrified horses, were struggling desperately and madly for existence, under the dim moonlight and amid the fiercely rushing waters, while the bewildered Bengal Lancers could only sit in their saddles and look helplessly on.

An officer whose horse had kicked Robert Wodrow, rendering him nearly insensible, failed to escape, and both were swept away, so, natheless, his reckless quotation from St. Luke's Gospel, there was to be no 'to-morrow' for the latter.

Captain D'Esterre Spottiswoode—afterwards colonel—was mounted on a very splendid and powerful horse, which was able to swim well, and bore him to the other bank in safety, but not to the end of the ford.

In dangerous quicksands it sank twice to its girth, on the last occasion falling on its rider, whose head was thrust so far below water that he was nearly drowned ere he scrambled breathlessly to dry land.

Colville, who had been riding with the captain and three subalterns at the head of the troop, which mustered seventy-six sabres, felt his horse become restive when the water flowed over his holsters; the animal kicked and plunged till at last he was thrown off its back, and found himself floundering in deep water. Being a good swimmer he thought to get rid of his sword and belt, but failed, as he sank each time in making the attempt, and each time he came to the surface with an invocation to heaven on his lips.

The men in the squadron were all in heavy marching order, fully accoutred and supplied with ammunition—circumstances sufficient to drag down a good swimmer even in smooth water. Nearly all were thrown by their terrified horses, which, as they rolled over and over, lashed out with their hoofs, maiming and stunning many of our poor fellows as they were swept into the dark rushing current of the rapids, and where these ceased lay a little pool of deep water, and there it was that all who had strength left to struggle succeeded in reaching the land, but many failed, alas!