CHAPTER XIX.

THE SKIRMISH.

Gratitude to General Trecarrel, who had been kind to his dead mother, to Sybil, and ever so to himself, with a natural regard for the old soldier as the father of Rose, made Denzil linger near him, and beseech him to retire and not to expose his life needlessly. Absorbed in his great grief the General made no reply; with his face pale, his eyes bloodshot, and his teeth set, he sat on horseback and watched the turns of the skirmish.

The juzailchees fired with deadly aim as they levelled their long weapons over rests, or the rocks behind which they were crouching; thus some ten or twelve of Waller's skirmishers had fallen; of these five were dead, and others were creeping wounded to the halting-place, which some of them were not destined to reach, as they died of exhaustion, loss of blood, or another bullet by the way.

His company continued to advance steadily by front and rear-rank files alternately, each man darting forward and getting under the cover of some rock or _bedana_ (as the wild mulberry bushes are named), till they were all within half musket shot of the foe. The reports of the firing were reverberated among the snow-clad cliffs, tossed from peak to peak, and so often repeated, that it seemed as if four times the number of men were engaged; but though each soldier had forty rounds of ammunition when leaving the Cantonments, cartridges were failing already, for their stiffened and frost-bitten fingers dropped more than they discharged, so that the living had soon to supply themselves from the pouches of the dead.

Suddenly a cry of pain escaped General Trecarrel, and he fell heavily from his horse, which swerved madly round, and fled into the Pass, with saddle reversed and bridle trailing. An exclamation of mingled rage and commiseration left the lips of Waller, who glanced back hastily in the humane hope that Mabel did not see this calamity, of which, however, she was so soon to hear.

A ball had pierced her father's body, going fairly through the chest and back, and he was dying in mortal agony, with the blood welling from his mouth and nostrils.

"Rose--Rose and--Mabel!" he muttered, as he slowly lifted his empty arms upward in the air, and then turning fairly round with his face to the snow, amid which his white hair mingled, he expired.

The whole catastrophe occurred in less time than is taken to write of it.

"How shall I break this fresh sorrow to poor Mabel!" said Waller, in a low voice, through his clenched teeth; but he had little time for reflection now, as a shout on the right flank announced the approaching Horse of Amen Oollah Khan, as they swept tumultuously round the pine wood, and came on at a hand-gallop, down ground that was frightfully steep.

"Rally--close to the centre--form company square!" cried Waller, holding his sword aloft. He looked to the rear; the promised support from the 5th Cavalry was not to be seen; but he heard a bugle in the camp sounding the "retire;" thus recalling his skirmishers, a most necessary measure, as a body of more than six hundred Horse, led, as it eventually proved, by Ackbar Khan in person, were now advancing through the Pass.

Waller's company formed a rallying square, and began to retire, still firing, however, while Denzil, assisted by Sergeant Treherne, endeavoured to bring off the body of General Trecarrel, by placing it across the horse of Audley, who had dismounted for that purpose. This caused a delay which proved fatal, as it separated them from their party. Twice the poor corpse slipped from the saddle, and they were in the act of replacing it for a third, time when, with a yell of,

"_Shookr-Joor vestie!_" (Praise be to God) four Afghan horsemen, riding far in advance of their comrades, were down upon them.

One of these, a gigantic fellow, wearing a flaming yellow head-dress, and a scarlet _chogah_ or cloak, struck off Audley's cocked hat, and grasping him viciously by the hair, dragged his head close to the saddle-lap, intending to cut it off by a slash of his long knife. Audley ran his sword into the bowels of this barbarian's horse. It reared furiously, and threw the rider, whose hold never relaxed, for he and Audley rolled over each other in close and deadly grapple, till Denzil passed his sword through the quivering body of the Afghan--a task which he had to repeat twice, as such fellows are hard to kill, ere he could release and save his kinsman.

Sergeant Treherne shot the second and bayoneted the third, a thrust from whose lance he narrowly escaped; but the fourth, whom a stray shot from the still retiring square had dismounted and wounded in the sword-arm, cried imploringly on his knees,

"_Aman! aman!_" (quarter--quarter), so Denzil arrested the charged bayonet of Treherne, which in another moment would have pinned him to the earth.

"Retire--retire, I command you both," cried Waller, whose voice was distant now.

"Thank heaven, Audley Trevelyan, I have repaid Sybil's debt to you--we are quits at last," was Denzil's thought, and he was turning away to hasten after the Company, for not a moment could be lost now, if he wished to save his own life, when suddenly he received a dreadful blow on the back part of the head--he heard the explosion of a pistol--the light went out of his eyes, or a darkness seemed to descend upon him; he fell forward on the snow with outspread hands, and remembered no more.

The wretch whose life he had just spared, had felled him to the earth by a stroke from a ponderous iron-butted pistol, and then discharged it at Audley, without effect, however, as the ball missed its object.

Treherne, who by this time had reloaded, shot the Afghan through the head, and then he and Audley Trevelyan had to run for their lives, as by this time the six Ressallahs of advancing Horse were close at hand, and cries of "_Ullah ul Alla_" loaded the frosty air.

"Poor Devereaux--gone with the rest!" exclaimed Polwhele.

"Yes," said Waller, "how many a poor fellow, gayer and happier than he apparently was, goes into action, confidently believing the bullet is not yet cast that shall floor him, and is shot for all that."

"Well--it may be our turn next, sir," said Sergeant Treherne, philosophically.

Fain would Waller and the rest have made a rally to bring him off dead or alive, at the bayonet's point, together with the body of Trecarrel; but the bugles of the rear-guard--first two, then four at once--were sounding, as if angrily, the order to _retire_ so, to "retire" he was compelled, or sacrifice perhaps his whole Company; and with tears in his eyes, where tears had not been since he was a child, in a white pinafore, at school, he drew off the survivors of the futile skirmish, and rejoined his brigade.

"Where is Papa?" asked an agitated voice. It was Mabel who addressed him, her face whiter, if possible, than ever.

Waller pointed with his sword towards the Pass and mournfully shook his head.

"Wounded?"

"Oh, my darling--killed, and poor young Devereaux, too, I greatly fear."

Mabel heard him as if turned to stone. Rose gone, and now her father too! Poor Denzil she never thought of, for great grief is selfish at times.

"Dearest Mabel," said Waller, "I do not ask you 'to compose yourself,' as people always say in such cases; I am a bad comforter perhaps--can't quote Scripture and all that sort of thing. The poor old man had not many years before him any way, and I can only implore you to submit to the will of God."

But she could only weep upon his breast, heedless of those around them.

"Where was he struck?" she asked, in a choking voice.

"I don't know," replied Waller, looking down.

"Did he die easily?"

"Yes."

Neither of these answers was true: but he knew that details would only harrow her feelings the more.

So the old General was left unburied in the Pass, and Mabel was smoothing caressingly with her fingers and then treasuring in her bosom, a thin lock of his silver hair, which Audley had cut for her, and which recalled the dead so powerfully in presence, as it were, that her heart seemed to brim with tears. There was no relic left of him now save this; unless we add a pair of his pipeclayed gloves, which he had given her to draw over her own for warmth, and somehow, they too seemed to embody his presence, and to bring before her by their very shape, the kind old hands that never tired of caressing her and Rose from infancy--the hands of him who was left without a grave in yonder fatal place, for the army was again in full retreat, and leaving, even as it left all yesterday, its dead and dying on every hand.

Audley thought with intense compassion of Sybil, whose previous bereavement he had learned from Waller; and all unused to grief, he rode among the Staff in a state of utter bewilderment, considering whether he should write her, and if so, in what terms he was to tell her of her loss.

For a time Mabel clung to Waller's neck, in her great despair of mind, like one in dreadful bodily agony. She cared not for onlookers; for the men of the 44th, or the sepoys, with their black glossy wondering eyes.

"Oh, Waller; I have no friend in the world now--no friend but you!" said she, in a strange and weak voice, as she laid her face, thinned and paled by grief and suffering, on his breast.

Waller's bright blue eyes were dry now; but in their expression tenderness alternated with something akin to ferocity, for all this suffering, and all those deaths that were occurring hourly, were the result of Afghan treachery; and his fair English face seemed to darken as he looked back to where Denzil, the General, and so many more were lying, and the interment of whom was impossible. The enemy was coming on, the bugles were sounding for the advance--if a retrograde movement can be called so--and already the whole force was _en route_ towards Khoord Cabul.

Mabel was soon once more on horseback, and rode with the rest of the ladies, many of whom were widows now, and could share their grief with her.

Her heart had

"Fallen too low for special fear;"

to her acute mental misery a kind of apathetic stupor followed, and she was in that state as the Retreat again began.