CHAPTER VI.

THE FORT OF MAHMOUD SHAH.

Resolutely had Leslie Colville defended the summit of the somewhat isolated tower on which he had taken post with only four chosen marksmen, intending to enfilade the front attack on the Residency, and pick off the best shots in possession of the lofty arsenal roof; but he had soon the mortification to see each of his men perish in quick succession, and to find the tower in flames beneath him, cutting off his descent, and leaving him helplessly exposed to a fire from those who must soon have smitten him down but for the frantic fury with which they impeded each other's aim and operations; and while thus perilously situated he heard friendly voices—or such he thought them to be—calling to him from below in Hindustani.

He looked down, and on a gun-platform about twenty feet from where he stood were four natives, Hindostanees, as appeared by their costume—the turban, with a couple of scarfs each, one wrapped round the body, and the other over the shoulders, leaving the rest of the body uncovered—holding outstretched a strong horse-rug or blanket, into which they invited him to drop himself, and trust to them and to their united strength for breaking his fall.

'Chullo, sahib—golee chulte!' (come along, sir—the balls are flying) cried one.

'Chullo, bhai—chullo, pultania sahib!' (Come on, brother—come, battalion officer) cried the other three, also in a kind of Hindustani; so Colville never doubted but that they were Hindoos—perhaps camp-followers—and Hindoos they certainly were.

He paused for a moment, irresolute whether to trust to them or—what? Meet death amid the flames which had cut off his retreat, and all chance of rejoining his struggling companions—the flames that were fast ascending in the tower from storey to storey, and would soon be bursting through the flat roof on which he stood, for already the smoke was rising like a black column through the trap-door by which he had reached it.

He failed to see the fierce expression of mockery and derision which was in the dark faces of the four men below, and, deeming it wiser to risk and trust them than to perish amid the flames, he dropped into the rug, in which they received him with shrill yells of triumph, for the plunder of his person, combined with his murder, were their objects.

But Colville was too quick for them. In leaping over he had relinquished the rifle he had been using for his sword, and with the latter, after baffling an attempt they made to muffle or bundle him up in the rug, while they were staggering beneath his weight, he waved them back just as they rushed upon him with their sharp charahs, and such blind hate and fury that they all wounded each other.

He then put his back against the wall, and kept them at bay with his sword-blade and levelled revolver, which, although they knew not, was unfortunately empty.

Streaming with blood from the wounds they had inflicted on each other, they strove to close in upon him, and speedily several budmashes with sword and shield, and other villains variously armed, came upon the scene, and their cries were loud and fierce.

'Astafferullah! put his head in a bhoosa bag, or one stuffed with chillies!'

'No, let it be in a bag of red pepper, and then let him die the death of the doomed!'

That he would have been bayoneted or shot and cut to pieces there and then was beyond a doubt, had not a horseman furiously intervened by dashing his steed between him and the rabble, who recoiled in recognition of his presence and authority as a sirdir, and he presented his right hand to Colville, exclaiming,

'I ate of your bread and salt on that night when you saved me from the Wahabi dogs in Jellalabad, and when I swore by the Koran and by the Five Keys of Knowledge never to forget your kindness—nor do I now!'

As he spoke Colville, even in that supreme moment of excitement and most deadly peril, recognised again Mahmoud Shah, the mock Hadji, with the Israeliteish features, the complexion fairer than most Afghans, and the livid sword-mark that traversed his right cheek.

The fanatic, for such he was, had for Colville gratitude, and when that exists there is always good-will.

Mechanically the latter grasped the hand held out to him, while the scowling mob, with gleaming eyes and weapons, dark and scowling visages, drew back.

'So—sirdir—you and the Hadji Mahmoud are the same?' exclaimed Colville.

'One and the same—I am that eater of dirt!' he added, to show his humility.

He ordered Colville to give up his arms, and, sending him under a strong escort of his own people out of the city, once more addressed himself to the congenial task of pressing the attack upon the Residency—a task which he continued to the bitter end.

Meanwhile Colville was conveyed, a prisoner, to one of the many forts which stud the plain of Cabul and the heights of Beymaroo that overhang it.

Mahmoud had suddenly become his protector in fulfilment of the old precept of being true to his salt; and Colville, who in his heart was intensely thankful to Heaven for the succour afforded to him, while so many poor fellows were perishing without mercy, felt confident that while with Mahmoud, or under his care, he was tolerably safe; for it is well known that after eating the bread and salt of another, or even salt alone, one, according to Oriental ideas, comes under peculiar obligations of protection and friendship.

As an illustration of this, Lane tells us, in one of his valuable notes to the 'Arabian Tales,' of a daring robber, who, one night, excavated a passage into the palace of the Governor of Sijistan, where he made up a great bale of gold and jewels; he was in the act of carrying it off, when, in the dark, his foot happened to strike against something hard on the floor. Believing it to be a jewel of some kind—perhaps a great diamond—he picked it up, and on applying his tongue to it, found that it was nothing else but a lump of rock salt.

Bitter was his disappointment, 'for having once tasted the salt of the ocean, his aversion gave way to his respect for the laws of hospitality; and throwing down his precious booty, he left it behind him, and withdrew empty-handed to his habitation.'

But Colville remembered, as old Colonel Spatterdash had told him scores of times, how Asiatics can quibble in this very matter; and that in the great Mutiny how often the Sepoys swore 'to be true to their salt,' and not to murder their officers, but stood placidly and approvingly by while the Pandies of other regiments slaughtered them.

In this fashion Mahmoud Shah might be true to his salt. Who can say or fathom the cruel duplicity of the Oriental mind and nature?

And, with these painful surmises and doubts in his mind, Colville heard the roar of the conflict in and around the doomed Residency dying away in the distance as the gates of the fort by the Cabul river were closed behind him.

As he entered, he looked back to the fatal Bala Hissar. The smoke of the conflict, mingled with that of the conflagration, was eddying about its picturesque towers and embattled masses on the mountain slope, all bathed in ruddy splendour by the setting sun. What was being enacted there now? he thought. Was all over now? Had the last of the brave fallen?

After sunset Mahmoud Shah arrived at the fort, which was his own patrimonial stronghold, and assured Colville that all was ended—the last man was slain, and the valour of the Cabulees had been successful.

'Success shows the hand of God, and of Mahomet the Prophet, blessed be their names!' he added.

His arrival at the fort was the signal for a species of ovation among his followers, who mustered some hundreds, all villainous but picturesque tatterdemalions, whose arms were as varied as the fashion and colours of their costume. Many had girdles of leather, from which hung bags for bullets, slugs, and flints, powder-horns and cases for cartridges. Others had cummerbunds, in which were stuck pistols, daggers, charahs, and British bayonets in such numbers that it would have been puzzling to find room for one weapon more.

In addition to all this paraphernalia, every man had a tulwar, and a juzail, or flint or match-lock rifle, in his hand.

Colville was compelled to dissemble his hatred and horror of those who had so wantonly slaughtered his brave companions, many of whose bright, joyous, and handsome English faces came so painfully to memory at that time, all lying cold and gashed and bloody among the ruins of the Residency; and that horror was blended with a great disgust of his host and protector, when he recalled the tragedy his treachery was supposed to have brought to pass with the squadron of the 10th Hussars; that he was a spy who had imposed upon himself at Jellalabad, and had led the Ameer's rebel tribes against us on more than one occasion; but with all this, policy, and his own personal safety, and hope of ultimate freedom compelled him to dissemble.

'Are you thirsty, sahib?' was the first question Mahmoud asked him on quitting his saddle.

'Yes; dying with it! Who could be otherwise after the horrors and exertion of the past day?' exclaimed Colville.

'Drink, then—the commands of the Prophet are nothing to you,' said Mahmoud, as he gave him a large cup filled with Cabul wine (which has a flavour not unlike full-bodied Madeira), and with it a bunch of the grapes of Ghuznee, which are greatly superior to those that grow in the plain of Cabul; and Colville, half-sinking with exhaustion caused by bodily fatigue and fierce over-excitement, thought he had never had refreshment more grateful and acceptable.

Built of mud and sun-dried bricks, the fort of Mahmoud was strong and spacious; it was square, with a squat, round tower at each angle and a keep in the centre, well loopholed for musketry, armed with jingals, and those huge swivel blunderbusses named zumbooracks, which, as firearms, are often as perilous to those who work them as to those at whom they are levelled.

The fort had two gates, in its eastern and western faces; these were protected by demi-bastions, and there was a moat, once filled by the Cabul, but now dry, neglected, and overgrown by vines and orange-trees.

The courtyard was spacious. In the keep was Dewan-i-Am, or audience-chamber, surrounded by a divan or continuous seat; beyond it was the Dewan-i-Kas, or principal private apartment, and in the towers were lodged the servants of the establishment; apart from all was a zenana, or women's apartments, and elsewhere, in every corner, were stowed away the garrison, composed of the budmashes and other tatterdemalions just described.

When not in the courtyard or on the summit of the keep—always closely watched—Colville was generally in the Dewan-i-Kas, where he shared the meals of the Mahmoud. Here carpets were laid on the floor, and there was a kind of chair or stool of state, with cushions for arms, and before it lay the tulwar, shield, and pistols of the sirdir, as in a place of honour.

The fort stood—and no doubt still stands—close to a bend of the clear and otherwise shallow Cabul, a river which is formed by the junction of the Ghorbund and Panjshir, and after dividing into three branches it reunites and flows into the Indus, three miles above the great fortress of Attock.

And Colville, in his prison in the fort—for a prison to all intents and purposes it was—lay for many a weary hour on a charpoy, or native bed, listening to the murmur of the stream as it flowed over its pebbled bed towards the mountain passes that led to India, and marvelled what was in store for him; how long his captivity would last; whether Mahmoud wanted a ransom or held him as a kind of hostage: for that the destruction of the embassy would be amply avenged none could doubt. Then how would it fare with the crafty Ameer?

'He is the son of an animal!' said Mahmoud, on one occasion, scornfully; 'he plays fast and loose with your people and his own. According to an old fable, every man bears on his back a wallet in which are deposited his weaknesses and his vices, which, though concealed from his own eyes, are open to the inspection of those of others. Thus we see that the Ameer, if not the tool of Britain, will be the slave of the Russ.'

'Through his duplicity I am a prisoner.'

'Better that than lying yonder in the Bala Hissar,' said Mahmoud, with a cruel leer in his glittering black eyes.

'I am most unfortunate!'

'It was to be, and so it is.'

The doctrine of fatalism meets and covers everything with the Mussulmans, who can thus throw on the Deity the results of their own negligence.

'If it is God's will that a man should die, let him die,' said Mahmoud, sententiously. 'If it be His will that he should live, let him live.'

Colville thought this was uncommonly like the creed of the 'Peculiar People,' in the city of London.

Though somewhat bored by the prayers and piety of Mahmoud Shah, and greatly disgusted by his ferocity, Colville had not much otherwise to complain of during his detention in the fort; and preferred those times when he was left to himself, when the sirdir secluded himself in his zenana, or was absent at the many weighty and evidently important conferences which were being daily held in the palace of Yakoub Khan. 'It is not good that man should be alone,' we are told; so, as Mahmoud the pious had at least four wives in his zenana, he spent much of his precious time there.

The food which he shared with his host was excellent—it could not be said at table, as it was spread on the floor; but, as knives, forks, and spoons are things unknown as yet under the shadow of the Hindoo Kush, it was rather repellant to our fastidious Guardsman to see Mahmoud rend asunder with his fingers a boiled chicken or daintily roasted hill chuckore (or Greek partridge), to hand him a piece with his brown-hued digits, which ever and anon he put half-way down his throat.

'Eat, sahib,' he would say; 'remember the proverb—touch the stomach and you injure the vitals, but cherish it and you gain heart.'

'But my heart sinks when I think of the friends I have lost through vile treachery.'

'It was the will of God your people should perish in the Bala Hissar,' replied Mahmoud, quietly, as he filled his mouth with a handful of boiled rice and green chillies. 'What says the Koran? "When God willeth evil on a people there shall be none to avert it, neither shall they have any protector beside Him. It is He who causeth the lightning to appear unto you, to strike fear, to raise hope, and who formeth the pregnant clouds." Praise God for His bounty; eat and have no heavy thoughts. The Prophet has written every man's fatal hour upon his forehead. It is done at his birth. Yours had not come, on that day in the Bala Hissar.'

Then Colville would think how strange and striking were his surroundings, and from the bearded face of the sirdir who squatted on a carpet opposite to him his eyes would wander round the Dewan-i-Kas where they were eating the evening meal.

A piece of raw cotton floating in oil that was held in an old ladle wedged into the bare stone wall cast its fitful and lurid glare on the dark faces, the gleaming eyes, the quaint costumes, and oriental weapons of the sirdir's men, who marvelled that he fed and housed an unbeliever, instead of cutting his throat and tossing his carcase to the jackals of the Beymaroo hills; an unbeliever, who shaved his chin and not his head; but Allah! how strange were the customs for the Feringhee-logue!

'And fortunate it was for you,' Mahmoud resumed after a time, when his chibouque was brought him, 'that your hour had not come; but come it will, and how will it fare with you then? The paradise which is promised to the pious is not for you,' he continued, plunging at once, as usual with the Afghans, into the Koran; 'therein are rivers of incorruptible water and of milk, the taste whereof changeth not; rivers of wine, pleasant unto those who drink; and of clarified honey; and therein shall be fruit of a thousand kinds, and a pardon from the Lord. Shall the man for whom all these are prepared by the Lord of the Daybreak, be as he who must dwell for ever in the fires of hell, and will have boiling water given him to drink, which shall burst his bowels?'

And ever and anon Colville was treated to quotations much to the same purpose.

Seeing him one day gazing at a photo of Mary Wellwood, the sirdir became at once full of curiosity.

'One of your wives?' he asked.

'No; but one who is to be my wife, I hope.'

'She cannot be of rank—she has no ring in her nose. Is she moon-faced?' (i.e., handsome.)

'Very; as you see.'

'And you love her very much?'

'I do indeed.'

'Better than your best horse, your camels, and all your fat-tailed sheep?'

'Better than all the world.'

'Inshallah; perhaps you may see her soon again.'

'Please God, I shall.'

'Do you keep her locked up—in care of your father, or who—as you are absent, and gone to the wars?'

'Why should I do so?'

'Many of our people, if of rank, lock up their wives when they travel.'

'Why?'

'They may be false and artful.'

'And what do you do then?'

He only smiled grimly, and touched the carved silver hilt of the charah in his crimson shawl girdle.

'You treat them with a spirit of selfishness,' said Colville; 'but I know that even Christian men do the same, by making more severe laws for women than themselves, forgetting that by so doing they raise them above themselves.'

But the sirdir knew not what to make of this idea, and so remained silent.

Nearly three weeks had passed since Colville became a prisoner in the fort of Mahmoud Shah, and no tidings had reached him of what was doing in the world of India, beyond the Kyber and other passes, or of what was transpiring in the city of Cabul.

He knew that tidings of the massacre then must have been flashed home by the electric telegraph long since, and that poor Mary would now be mourning for him, as one who was no more!

CHAPTER VII.

THE FUGITIVE.

Ignorant that Taimur, the Usbeg Tartar, the Guide soldier, was preceding him, Robert Wodrow—full of longing for dire and terrible vengeance on those who had destroyed his comrades and friends, among them more especially Leslie Colville, as he never doubted—trod resolutely on to reach Lundi-Khana Kotal, or any outpost at the head of the Kurram Valley.

From the circumstance of Robert Wodrow being a gentleman by birth and education, and that both had loved two sisters, there had been a bond of friendship between the staff-captain and the luckless private of hussars.

They were Europeans—another tie; and more than all, when so far away from all who loved them, they were 'brother Scots.'

Hungry and athirst—though the latter suffering could be appeased at any passing stream—the evening of the day after the massacre, when Wodrow finally turned his back upon the smoking ruins of the Residency, saw him disguised and armed as we have described, resolutely pursuing the mountain-path which led, he knew, from Cabul, past Buthak towards the Lataband Pass, a distance of twenty-two miles; but, disguised though he was, he felt that it was necessary for his safety to avoid all towns and villages, among which, no doubt, news of the destruction of the Feringhees must have spread like wildfire.

He found himself in a solitude—a place of the most intense loneliness, so he paused to rest himself awhile beside a runnel that trickled down the rocks, and to gather a few wild apples and grapes. On one side rose the Katcha mountains to the height of eight thousand feet; on the other were mountains quite as lofty. It was such a scene and place as would require the pencil of Salvator Rosa to depict, so deep were the shadows in the dark and savage passes, so red the light that glowed on the eastern slopes of the mighty hills as the sun veered westward.

Vast groves of jelgoozeh pines, black and solemn, cast a gloom in some places; in others the sturdy, snake-like roots of the banyan-tree curled and twisted themselves among the rocks, and through the holes and crevices of a little ruined musjid, or wayside house of prayer, built of red and white marble, which was open and empty.

Wodrow looked at it wistfully, as if he would select it as a place wherein to pass the night and escape the mountain dews; but he thought of the snakes he had seen, and scorpions too, and remembered, with a shudder, the huge and venomous reptiles of that kind he had seen on the plains of Peshawur.

He selected a crevice in the rocks where a quantity of dry and dead leaves had been drifted by the wind, put his Afghan shield and tulwar under his head as a pillow, muffled his furred choga around him, and, soldier-like, accustomed to sleep anywhere, anyhow, or at any time, he slept till morning was well in, so much had he been overcome by the weariness of the preceding twenty-four hours.

Another ten miles would bring him, he knew, to Jugdulluk—that place of evil omen and blood—towards which the lonely fugitive trod on through black and frowning gorges, where fantastic rocks, savage and weird, flung grey and purple shadows that made the deeper passes dark as midnight, and there the waters of the mountains could be seen reflecting the sky above, as they rolled through the obscurity so far down below.

In some parts the mountains rose the perfection of naked desolation, appalling in their silence and sublimity, looking like the scene of some Titanic conflict in ages unknown, and yet every foot of the way there had been traced in British blood—the blood of Elphinstone's massacred army in the war of 1841.

At one point, as Robert Wodrow was proceeding along a narrow ledge above a giddy precipice, where the mists of a foaming torrent streamed upward from the deep dark chasm below, he had a narrow escape, at the thought of which his blood ran cold.

At one place, treading over a loose spot, the earth and splintered rock gave way beneath his feet, and before he could recover himself he fell upon a lower ledge, some fifteen feet beneath, where he lay for a time, half stunned and scarcely daring to breathe.

At that moment death seemed close indeed!

He was only five yards from the edge of a precipice, the height of which his mind failed to fathom, and, as one in a dreadful dream, he crawled upward and away from it on his hands and knees, till a surer and less perilous route—path it could not be called—was won, and he resumed his way with a prayer of thankfulness on his lips and in his heart—one of the prayers he had learned as a child at his mother's knee in the old manse of Kirktoun-Mailler.

His anxiety and disquietude were increased now by hearing more than once amid these profound solitudes the moaning yell of a hyæna, responded to by that other peculiar sound which seems to be something between the wail of a child and the howl of a dog—the cry of the jackal; thus, the peril of hostile men apart, he was not sorry when he came suddenly upon a species of village in a hollow of the hills—we say a species of village, as it did not consist of built houses, but only some seven or eight huts.

The dwellings, poor and mean, were formed of stakes cut from the adjacent forest, with walls formed of wicker-work plastered with mud, and called 'wattle and dab;' leaves of trees and jungle grass formed the roof, and all around them was jungle tainting the air, and to the European very suggestive of fever and miasma.

The inhabitants were rude and simple shepherds, whose doombas, or fat-tailed Persian sheep, were grazing in the neighbouring valley, and they seemed somewhat awed by the gaunt, tall, and keen-eyed warrior, who, with shield and tulwar, pistols and dagger, his floating loongee and cloak, alike stained with what was too evidently blood, suddenly appeared among them and asked for food, offering for it a handful of kusiras, or Afghan pence.

From them he got milk, chupattees, and a cuddoo, or gourd full of curry and rice, of which he ate like a famished kite, while the wondering shepherds looked on without questioning, and evidently impressed by the swagger and adopted ferocity of his bearing, believing he could be no other than 'a very devil of a budmash' (or swashbuckler) steeped in the blood of the Feringhees.

Refreshed now, he resolved to lose no time in pushing on, saying that he was going to Tezeen, which was not the case, as it lay some miles on his right, but pursued the path towards the Suffaidh Sang, and was warned at parting to beware of a certain place, marked by some ruined walls, which were the abode of the Ghoule Biaban.

Had these shepherds penetrated his disguise or doubted him? He almost feared so, as he saw a little group of them, clad in their loose blouses and conical caps of black fur, conferring together and watching him as he disappeared over a kotal, a place where the road dipped down.

Sunset and falling darkness—after which it was perilous to travel in such localities—found him at the ruined walls referred to as the abode of the Ghoule, and there in a little clump of wild pistachio trees he took up his quarters for the night, rightly supposing that all natives would sedulously shun a place haunted by such a dreadful demon as the Ghoule Biaban, or Spirit of the Waste—a gigantic and hideous spectre, with a red tail and claws like a syces sickle, who is supposed to haunt all lonely places in Afghanistan and devour any passenger whose evil fortune casts him in his way.

No ghoule came to Robert Wodrow in his sleep, but a delightful dream, which made him long remember the pistachio tope amid the lonely waste—a dream of Ellinor Wellwood!

So powerful, so vivid, was this dream that he almost said to himself was it in sleep she came before him?

He dreamed that she was beside him and imploring his forgiveness, took his hands in her own, and pressed her lips passionately to them. Then her cheek seemed to touch his, and he could feel her soft sweet breath, and her dear eyes looked tenderly into his.

So vivid was that dream that he turned his head on the root of the tree against which it rested, towards the vision, if we may use the term, and then, of course, it vanished, and the light of the African sun streamed between the branches into his eyes.

Robert Wodrow's heart beat hopefully and happily; he felt that he had looked into the face of his other soul, with the assurance that they would one day meet again; and that notwithstanding their separation, and all that had come to pass, they were—perhaps—kindred spirits after all; and that phrase has a deeper signification than most people think. 'It is my solemn belief,' says a recent writer, 'that spirits are wedded before their birth into this world, and that somewhere, perhaps separated by barriers of space and circumstances, there exists for every soul its fellow, its complement, whose imperfections joined to that other's, will make a perfect whole, if only men and women would not so rashly take the counterfeit for the real.'

So Robert Wodrow flattered himself that Ellinor, perhaps in a dream of her own, had somehow come to him in the spirit, a wild and mystic idea; but, as he examined his arms and ammunition before again resuming his journey, he found that there had been perilously near him in the night something as bad, if not worse, than the Ghoule Biaban!

Amid the sandy mud of a runnel that ran not far from the ruined walls there were distinctly traceable the prints of tigers' feet, quite fresh, like the paw-marks of a gigantic cat; so on this night, when he thought that by the influence of superstition he was unusually safe, he had been in more than usual peril!

A few miles more would bring him to Gundamuck, a walled village, twenty-eight miles west of Jellalabad, surrounded by luxuriant wheat-fields and tall groves of sombre cypresses—the place where Yakoub Khan and the ill-fated Cavagnari had signed that treaty of peace which the former had so basely violated; but Gundamuck was a place to be avoided by the fugitive, who kept among the mountains above it, thus having to ford more than one tributary of the Surkh-ab river, and while sighing to think he had still nearly seventy miles to travel on foot before he would hear the sound of a British bugle, he struck manfully into paths which presented themselves here and there, but seemed to be only marked by the tread of beasts of prey.

Among rocky mountains, divested of all verdure and green clothing, his way lay now for miles, and, if the utter loneliness of the scenes ensured safety, it was at times not the less impressive and appalling to the solitary man, and made him think,

'The silent gloom around hath power
    To banish aught of gladness;
The good with awful dreams to thrill,
    The guilty—drive to madness!'

CHAPTER VIII.

THE GHILZIE.

In avoiding the village of Gundamuck by making a detour to the right, Robert Wodrow came upon a handsome Moslem edgah built in a solitary place. The mausoleum—for such it was, erected over the remains of a santon or holy man—was built of white marble, with a dome and finely carved horseshoe-shaped entrance door.

The oleander and rose shed perfume around it, with many a flower grown wild, as the garden which once environed it, either by dissensions incident to Afghanistan or the departure of a tribe, was completely neglected now. The custard apple, the pomegranate, and the citron hung their golden but untasted fruit around it, and the snow-white blossoms of the sweet jasmine hung in garlands from tree to tree.

The tomb looked solemn and picturesque, and Robert Wodrow was in the act of pausing in his lonely way to admire it, when, somewhat to his consternation, there stalked forth from the interior a tall and grim-looking Afghan warrior, completely armed.

His rosary of ninety-nine beads—each representing an attribute of the Diety—dangled at his left wrist; thus he had evidently been saying his prayers at the shrine of the santon.

By some of the details of his costume he was evidently a Ghilzie, a tribe above seven hundred thousand in number, who occupy the central portion of that mountainous district which lies between Candahar and Cabul—fierce, hardy, and warlike people, led always by many chiefs of undoubted valour, under whom they have always given, and will yet give, the British troops infinite trouble.

His long, aquiline face was fair for an Afghan, being what they term 'wheat-coloured,' but his glittering eyes were dark and keen, and his beard was black as the conical fur cap that surmounted his beetling and shaggy eyebrows.

Seeing that Wodrow's hand instantly wandered to the hilt of his sword, as if instinctively he saw a foe, the Afghan became alarmed, suspicious, and, pausing close by the door of the edgah, scrutinised the stranger; and whether it was that some of the dark paste had left the latter's face, or that there was some discrepancy in his costume, it is impossible to say, but the Afghan unsheathed his sword and shouted,

'Feringhee!'

He then levelled a pistol at the head of Wodrow, but it hung fire, and the latter, ere he could draw another, instantly closed with him.

He was a man of enormous stature and great muscular strength; he was, moreover, fresh and well-fed, while the luckless Robert Wodrow was faint, weary, and worn, having been feeding on fruit and wayside herbs, or little better, since the morning that saw the slaughter at the Residency inaugurated.

Wodrow carried an Afghan shield of tanned buffalo hide, elaborately gilded and furnished with four brass bosses; but simply as a portion of his disguise, which the Ghilzie had so quickly penetrated, but he knew not how to use it effectively, while his antagonist had a small one, not much larger than a dinner-plate, on his left arm, and when grasped in his left hand, it proved a defence which he used with wonderful skill and dexterity.

Both men were brave, completely master of their weapons, full of perfect confidence in themselves, and what Wodrow afterwards called 'a rattling set-to, in which the pot-lid,' as he styled the little Afghan shield, 'bore a great part,' now ensued.

The Ghilzie fought in the spirit of rancour, excited by difference of race and religion; Robert Wodrow in a spirit of desperation, to preserve his life and liberty, and to achieve this nothing was left him but to kill his assailant outright, if he could; but all that he had been taught by the hussar drill-sergeant and fencing, master—cut one and left point—two and right point—three and right point again—cut four and left point, &c.—was useless here.

They both used tulwars of equal weight, keenness, and length, but the Ghilzie was fresh for the combat, and his tiny shield of tempered steel grasped by a strong and active hand, if small, was handy, impenetrable, and was ever opposed to the shower of cuts and thrusts that Wodrow intended for its owner.

Ever and anon they paused to gather breath, though they panted rather than breathed, and their eyes glared into each other, as the rage of conflict and lust of destruction grew in their hearts—Wodrow the while feeling that every moment was to him most precious, as he knew not what succour or comrades his foe might have at hand.

He hewed, slashed, and thrust away, but there was no circumventing the use of that pestilent little iron shield, which rang and emitted red sparks beneath his strokes, and which there seemed no means of getting over, under, or round about.

The Ghilzie warrior was compelled, by the activity and desperation of Wodrow's attack, to stand more on the defensive than he expected, and his mountain blood waxed hot. Drawing back a pace or two, he hurled three pistols in succession, which he snatched from his girdle, at the head of Wodrow, who adroitly 'dodged' them, and suddenly closing, struck the Ghilzie's tulwar from his hand to the distance of some yards.

The sudden wrench this action occasioned his wrist disconcerted him, and Wodrow's sword having completed the sweep of the stroke, was descending on his head ere he had time to draw the deadly charah which, among other weapons, was stuck in his girdle, when up went the tiny shield, and in saving his head he left his face exposed, and right into it Robert Wodrow planted his clenched hand with such force and fury that the Ghilzie stumbled backward, and in falling was twice run through the body and slain. Choking in blood, his last words were:

'I am gone. Oh, place my feet towards the Keblah.'

Robert Wodrow felt neither pity nor remorse just then, as his blood was boiling in fever-heat, and the Ghilzie had sought his own destruction.

The victor cast a rapid and furtive glance around him, and then hurried on his way. Save the dead man, no other enemy was in sight.

In a little time Wodrow looked back to the place where the Ghilzie lay, and already he could see hovering over the latter in mid-air several great black vultures wheeling in circles prior to swooping down to begin their horrible banquet.

That his disguise had been seen through by this unfortunate fellow greatly disconcerted Robert Wodrow, and deprived him of much of the confidence he had hitherto possessed, and he thought of travelling only by night, and lurking in the woods or among rocks by day; but his ignorance of the country, and the necessity of studying such landmarks as he remembered, and keeping to the beaten path as much as possible, together with the necessity for procuring food at all risks, compelled him to relinquish the idea.

He untwisted another cartridge, and again, with water from a runnel, made some dark dye in a leaf, and carefully rubbing therewith his face, neck, and ears, betook himself to the mountain ridges that overhung Bahar; the latter is only twelve miles from Gundamuck, but so rugged was the way he had to pursue, and so many the detours he had to make to find fords on the streams he had to cross, that evening was drawing on by the time he had passed on the right flank of the village.

He continued his way a few miles beyond it, and then, feeling overcome by profound weariness and prostration after the events and toil of the past day, he lay down among some thick, soft grass a little way apart from the road, and, oblivious of snakes, wild animals, and dew, dropped into a deep and dreamless sleep.

How long he lay thus he knew not, but he was roused by voices and other sounds. Starting up he found a moon of wonderful brilliance shining clearly as if a second day had dawned, and close by him a group of men with laden camels—a group that had halted on finding him prostrate there, in doubt whether he was alive or dead.

On seeing the turbans and dark faces, Wodrow thought all was over with him, and his hand went at once to the hilt of his sword, and he longed for the ring of Gyges, or anything that would render him invisible.

But the men among whom he found himself evidently took him for an Afghan, and evinced no sign of hostility, though they were all well armed.

They proved to be five merchants from Ghuznee, having camels laden with those dried fruits which constitute the principal article of trade between Afghanistan and India, and these, together with oranges, citrons, tobacco, and jars of red and yellow Derehnur wine, they were now conveying to the banks of the Indus to exchange for British goods, or sell, if possible, at the first British fort.

Like themselves, their syces and bheesties (grass-cutters and water-carriers) were all well armed, but were Hindoos, and with the whole party Robert Wodrow had no occasion for much fear, as his residence in the house of the Hakim, together with his knowledge of the natives, picked up elsewhere, stood him in good stead now.

'What are you?' asked one of the merchants.

'A tchopper of Cabul,' replied Wodrow.

'Then where is your horse?'

'He fell under me on the way,' replied Wodrow, seeing at once his mistake, for in Afghanistan, as in Persia, State despatches are carried by mounted messengers called tchoppers, or mounted couriers, and private letters by cossids, or foot-messengers, who will sometimes travel seventy leagues in four consecutive days.

'Then you are the bearer of a royal despatch?'

'From the Ameer, whom God long preserve, to the officer commanding the outpost at the Lundi-Khana Kotal. In the name of the Prophet, give me some food; I am starving.'

The unsuspecting merchants hastened to supply his wants, and one said,

'Your despatch, no doubt, refers to the vengeance of heaven which has overtaken the Feringhee dogs at the Bala Hissar?'

'I presume so,' replied Wodrow, eating cold meat and buttered chupatties with infinite relish. 'If it isn't an angel they are entertaining unawares, they little think it is one of the 10th Hussars,' was his thought. 'As for the Feringhees, they are now eating other food than this,' said he aloud.

'True,' added the merchant; 'the tree of Al Zakkum, which issueth from the bottom of hell, and the fruit whereof resembleth the heads of devils.'

'May all their kindred come, as they have done, to a knowledge of their fiendish idolatry,' said another, his voice becoming hoarse in the extremity of his hatred; 'the heathens—the savages that they are—dogs who come among us to cast a slur upon civilised men and a holy religion—who eat of the unclean pig, a brute like themselves; but we shall not cease to strike and slay, Bismillah! till not one of them remain alive on this side of Attock!'

'Oho, my friend,' thought Robert Wodrow; 'by Jove, I must keep my eye upon you, now that I know the amiability of your sentiments.'

He then learned with extreme satisfaction that they meant to pass Lundi-Khana Kotal. He was accommodated with a seat on one of the camels, which, though laden, travelled at a good average pace, and he resolved to be very taciturn and careful in his bearing and demeanour, especially after the morning dawned.

'Fate and fortune have long seemed dead against me,' thought he; 'yet, heaven knows, it is not because I have been faint of heart; and heaven always helps those who help themselves.'

With these merchants he now travelled in ease and security for the remainder of his journey, passing undiscovered through Sador, Baru, Basawul, and other villages, and traversing the upper end of savage Khoord Khyber Pass. Ere long he found himself approaching Lundi-Khana Kotal, a post two thousand four hundred and eighty-eight feet above the level of the sea, just as dawn was breaking, and there came to him on the morning wind a sound there was no mistaking—the pipers of a Highland regiment playing the morning reveille, 'Hey, Johnnie Cope,' among the white tents of the British camp, and then he knew that he was safe.

CHAPTER IX.

A NEW SNARE.

In detailing the adventures of Leslie Colville and Robert Wodrow in the distant land where fate and the fortunes of war had cast them together, we have somewhat anticipated the time and the troubles brought upon Ellinor by the daring of her unscrupulous abductor.

The snares that had been laid for her, the loyal heart she had lost and now believed to be cold in the grave—all came before the girl with painful vividness, and she loathed herself for ever having listened, as she had done at Birkwoodbrae, to the artful wretch who from first to last had sought to lure her to destruction by so many specious falsehoods; for, in many ways, the baronet had now become so degraded in character that, so far as truth went, he was like the man mentioned by Mark Twain, who had such a sacred regard for truth that he never by any chance used it.

Sooth, however, to say, prudence and weariness at times suggested to Sir Redmond the abandonment of his enterprise and designs regarding Ellinor; at other times, obstinacy, distorted pride, and, more than all, inflamed passions and her apparent helplessness, spurred him on in his schemes. He felt now that, if these were unsuccessful, they could only be relinquished at peril and exposé to himself.

Her inertia provoked and alarmed him. He would have preferred some of her former desperate energy, even though accompanied by undisguised repugnance of himself.

He knew that now, with Mary Wellwood, the luckless Ellinor must be numbered with the dead; the last despairing advertisements he had seen in the Hamburger Nachrichten and other journals led him to infer that such must be the case, and that the sorrowing sister had no doubt left Altona in a state of grief, for which he cared not a jot.

He knew also that Ellinor was ignorant of Mary's precise whereabouts, whether she was still in Altona or had gone back to London or Birkwoodbrae; that she could not communicate with her, even by letter, save through him, and was thus completely in his power, as a baby or a bauble might have been; and he vaguely thought that if he could get her away, on any pretence, to Brussels or some quiet little village in the Netherlands, she would be still more so, and for the contingencies of the future he drew heavily on his bankers through Herr Burger, in the Gras Keller.

For the future—let the future take care of itself! He had broken with English society, if not with the police. Who was there, as a relation, to call him to account, and who had the right to do so? he asked of himself.

As he was not without fears or suspicions of his friend Mr. Adolphus Dewsnap, he resolved to get her away from the yacht.

'Tears—always tears!' said he, angrily, on the day after the Flying Foam was moored alongside the jetty in the Binnenhafen. 'I daresay, like your sister, you are sorry for that fellow Colville—your "cousin" as he called himself—a good joke that! Very terrible, of course—cut off by the Cabul niggers, and so forth; but we can only die once. Hope he was duly prepared, as the devil-dodgers say, and all that sort of thing.'

In furtherance of his plan to get her away from the yacht, he said, quite deliberately,

'Your friend Mrs. Deroubigne has left Altona.'

'Left it—gone!' exclaimed Ellinor, in a weak voice, and grieved but not surprised.

'Yes.'

'For where?'

'To another residence in Hamburg, whither I shall shortly take you and leave you to relate your own adventures, for I am deuced tired of this kind of work.'

A gush of joy, but joy without the least gratitude, welled up in the heart of Ellinor, and she prepared with wonderful alacrity to accompany him, never suspecting that he was cajoling her and meant to put her in the hands of Frau Wyburg, who for a sum paid down had promised to keep her safely till he made other arrangements.

He could not take her to the Kron Prinzen, L'Europe, or any of the great hotels, for there she would have claimed and found protection, and for him she would, he knew, be quite helpless in the hands of Frau Wyburg and her husband; thus he resolved to keep his own counsel on leaving the yacht as to where he was taking her; but Mr. Dolly Dewsnap and Kingbolt too had shrewdly their own ideas on the subject.

'Sorry we are not to have your company to the coast of France, Miss Ellinor,' said Dewsnap, as he pressed a glass of wine upon her ere she departed.

'I don't think you'll miss much,' said Ringbolt, as the pale girl made no reply. 'There you get sour wine, and they call it vin ordinaire, and all kinds of offal cooked with fine French names, so that I defy you to tell whether you are eating a bird of the air or a fish of the sea. Ah, there is no place like Old England.'

Mr. Dolly Dewsnap was about this time, as his subordinate Kingbolt said, 'three sheets in the wind,' even before going to a late dinner at Hotel de Russie in the Jungfernsteig, and he was propping himself against the cabin table while sipping his sherry, and regarding Ellinor with a leering expression of admiration.

'Won't you have a cigarette, Miss Ellinor?' said he, suddenly producing his cigar-case.

'Scotch girls, and English ones too, don't smoke,' said Sleath, angrily.

'Why not?' responded Dewsnap, sharply; 'by Jingo, I knew a Russian Princess—the Princess Wroguenoff—who always smoked Turkish tobacco in a Manzanita pipe; and a charming woman she was.'

'So you don't know her now, Dolly?'

'How do you know?' asked the other, who was disposed to be quarrelsome just then.

'You speak of her in the past tense.'

'The droski waits, sir,' said Gaiters, suddenly appearing in the companion-way.

Sir Redmond gave his hand to Ellinor, who was ready, hatted and shawled, and barely gave a bow of farewell to Dewsnap, as she ascended to the deck, and bade adieu to her Vierlander attendant.

Evening had fallen now, and the gas-lamps were reflected in the murky and muddy waters of the Binnenhafen, as she stepped ashore, and entered a close droski (as those cabs are named which ply for hire in all the principal thoroughfares of Hamburg) unnoticed by any but some dock porters, and an organ-grinder with a monkey 'appropriately dressed in Highland costume,' as Sleath remarked while putting his head out of the window, and telling Gaiters, who was seated beside the driver, where they were to go.

The vehicle proceeded slowly, and Ellinor, while in a fever of impatience, and without hearing what Sir Redmond was saying to her, looked forth from the windows alternately, and recognised the church of St. Nicolai as they passed through the Hopfen Market, the street called the Gras Keller, and the long and stately Neuerwall, after which they seemed to traverse streets that were unknown to her, old, mean, and dirty.

'Need I urge upon you how strangely our paths seem to cross each other—how strangely our lives seemed linked together, Ellinor?' said he, attempting to take one of her hands caressingly.

This roused her, and she withdrew it sharply.

'Still perverse!' he resumed, with knitted brows. 'Fate has thrown us together for a third time. You escaped me twice; but the third time mine you shall be, so sure as you hear me speak!'

She made not the slightest response, and surveyed with surprise the network of canals and wet ditches the droski crossed by a succession of iron bridges.

'Ellinor,' said Sir Redmond again, 'you are over-excited; you have not recovered from the terror of your accident—the sickness and storm at the river mouth.'

Her face was pale and rigid; her eyes alternately flashing fire at the prospect of freedom, and then growing cold as steel with indignation.

To her it began to seem impossible that Mrs. Deroubigne and Mary could have left their pretty and airy villa at Altona, on the grassy bank of the Elbe, to dwell in such a locality as that in which she found herself when the droski stopped.

'Here we are, sir,' said Gaiters, jumping down and touching his cockaded hat.

A bell that emitted a dismal sound resounded to the downward pull of the iron handle, and a large door—but all the doorways are large in Hamburg—unfolded, showing a gloomy porch, lighted only by the oil-lamp that burned feebly before a madonna perched on the wall to give the house an external air of respectability.

After a conference with some one within, Gaiters reappeared at the droski window.

'Madame Wyburg,' he said, 'tells me that Mrs. Deroubigne has left this place two days ago, and gone, she believes, to Brussels.'

'To Brussels!' exclaimed Ellinor, sick with disappointment and dismay, as she sank back on her seat. 'I cannot go there vaguely in search of them——'

'Of course not; so what then?'

'Oh, let me get back to London—to Grosvenor Square!'

'You are too ill to travel just now, and must remain with kind Madame Wyburg for a few days till the exact address of Mrs. Deroubigne is found,' said Sleath, in the most persuasive tone he could adopt; 'but here comes the master of the house,' he added, as a very singular figure appeared.

A man short in stature, but thick-set and powerfully built, with leery grey eyes, dissipated and bloated features, and a ragged red moustache, wearing a quaint garb, entirely black, with a plaited ruff round his neck, a wig curled and powdered, a short Spanish cloak, and a long Toledo sword, with a Mother Hubbard hat on his head, sharply pointed, and about two feet high.

This strange apparition of the sixteenth century doffed his steeple-crowned hat to Ellinor, who after a time discovered that the Herr Wyburg, among various other less respectable avocations, whereby to eke out a living, was one of the sixteen Reiten-Diener, or hired mourners, who—instead of the friends of the deceased—attend funeral processions in Hamburg, carrying out Charles Dickens's well-known definition of such a ceremony as 'a masquerade dipped in ink.' He had just come from having a 'deep drink' with his comrades after an interment at the Begrabnissplatze, or grand cemetery, outside the Ulricus Bastion, for in their ways these fellows are precisely like the human carrion crows we may see daily perched on the top of London hearses returning from Kensal Green, Brompton, or elsewhere, in a state of hat-band, jollity, and gin.

He also bowed low and leeringly to Sir Redmond Sleath.

This was not the first of the baronet's acquaintance with these people. He had been aided by the Frau Wyburg in more than one nefarious intrigue, the victim of which had dropped out of society, and by her husband in more than one shady gambling transaction in a 'hell' of the Adolphus Platze, ere he succeeded to the title his father's shady politics had won; so the trio knew each other thoroughly.

Ellinor, conceiving that she must be safer in the care of one of her own sex than on board the yacht, agreed to remain with Frau Wyburg till she proceeded to London or Brussels, and from that moment found herself more than ever a hopeless prisoner.

The frau was a pale, little woman, with black hair, wicked dark eyes, a square and resolute-looking jaw, a cruel mouth, and a face generally on which, after a time, Ellinor could not look without a shudder when the woman's real character became known to her; but as yet she was disposed to cling to her as a friend—a protector—in her helplessness and excessive debility after all she had undergone, and she gratefully accepted at her hands a cup of hot coffee in her cosy parlour, with its gay chintz curtains and polished oak floor, while her husband, with an eye to monetary business, drew Sir Redmond aside to another apartment.

CHAPTER X.

THE HOUSE BY THE FLEETHEN.

The abode of Herr Wyburg was situated in the oldest part of Hamburg, where the streets are narrow, crowded, irregular, and, if picturesque, squalid. They are generally of great height, built in the Dutch fashion of brick and wood, and those inhabited by the lower orders have their narrow windows so near each other as to give them the aspect of huge manufactories, but with a heavy and gloomy character about them.

Many of these brick-nogging, tumble-down dwellings are admirable subjects for the pencil. Numerous canals called Fleethen intersect this quarter, and run along the backs of the houses, giving the streets a resemblance to those of Holland. In summer the muddy exhalations from these are very unwholesome, and might prove pestilential, were it not for the agitation in them caused by the current of the Elbe.

In this odious and unsavoury, but picturesque part of the city, which escaped the great fire of 1842, and which has undergone little change since the days of the Hanseatic League, the back wall of Herr Wyburg's house was washed by the waters of the Fleethen, while on one side it was isolated from the haggard district in which it stood by a large market-garden.

The original frame of the house had been altogether wood—Baltic pine—but would seem to have been patched and repaired with bricks.

The arms of Holstein and Schleswig, the nettleleaf and two lions respectively, were reproduced in various parts of it, for in other times it had been a residence of the old Counts of Holstein, the ancient Lords of Hamburg, a dignity claimed by the Kings of Denmark till 1768; but in rank it had come sorely down in the world, just as in Scottish towns we find the ancient abodes of nobility, and even of royalty, now abandoned to the squalid and the poor.

Its walls were in some places panelled with almost black mahogany, quaintly, if uncouthly, carved, and much discoloured by damp from the adjacent Fleethen. The windows were high, jealously grated with iron, and admitted but a foggy kind of light, even by noonday, and the whole edifice had a general aspect of dreariness and desolation that sunk like a weight on the young heart of Ellinor Wellwood.

The back windows alone were ungrated, but then they overlooked the Fleethen, that system of canals and intersecting ditches which conceal many a crime, and where the body of the murdered—if found before being swept into the Elbe—passes often for that of a suicide.

When Wyburg withdrew with Sir Redmond, he offered that worthy his hand, but the latter ignored the action, and did not respond to it. In this he only acted 'snobbishly,' not because he knew the other to be a finished rascal; and over the face of the latter there passed a flush of rage and affront, while a dangerous gleam came into his watery eyes.

'It is no use, Sir Redmond, your attempting to come the fine or arrogant gentleman over me,' said Herr Wyburg; 'you and I are too old acquaintances for that.'

His English was remarkably distinct, though of course the foreign accent was very marked. He had been a billiard-marker in the Strand, but had to quit London in some haste, having become too well-known in the vicinity of 'Lester Square.' Hence it was that he knew English well, and London too, in all its worst, foreign, and most disreputable phases.

He was a billiard-marker and gambler still, and ready to do any rascality for which he was sufficiently paid. His wife—the Frau Wyburg—had once been a dancer in the Schweitzer Pavilion and Ambiguity Circus, during her less disreputable days, and was no more above taking a bribe than himself.

'Sir Redmond,' said he, pocketing the gold by which his services were to be secured, 'I have seen some pretty faces in my time, but the fraulein is downright beautiful!' he added, as he thought with genuine admiration of the clear, creamy skin which so often accompanies such hair and dark-blue eyes as those of Ellinor.

'This young lady is my wife,' said Sleath, a little emphatically; 'and I wish you and your worthy frau to take all requisite care of her for me—for a time.'

Herr Wyburg closed one eye, and, with intense cunning in the other, surveyed the speaker.

'Your wife?' said he.

'Yes.'

'She has no wedding-ring.'

'If it is not on her finger, it ought to be.'

'And you wish us to take care of her—that she does not escape, you mean?'

'Precisely.'

'Why?'

'Need you ask me why?' said Sleath, with irritation. 'She is ill—strange,' he added, putting a finger to his forehead. 'Poor girl—you understand?'

Herr Wyburg winked his cunning eye again. He did understand, and shrewdly disbelieved that the girl was Sleath's wife; yet her bearing, her fear, repugnance, and bodily weakness all puzzled him, and, like his wife, he knew not what to think, save that Sleath's golden sovereigns were very acceptable, and the latter now prepared to depart—his droski was still at the door—and he bade Frau Wyburg 'good-night,' after she had recommended him not to insist on again seeing Ellinor, who had retired to her room.