CHAPTER XXI.

WALLER'S ADVENTURES.

"Run to earth at last!" groaned Bob Waller, whose subsequent perils were so varied and remarkable that they alone, if fully detailed, might fill a volume.

In that cavern or fissure, one of the many which abound in the rocks there, he lay the whole day, untraced and undiscovered, for the Afghans, after having stripped and mutilated in their usual fashion, the dead on the snow-covered knoll, had retired. He knew that he was only sixteen miles from that bourne they had all hoped to reach--Sale's little garrison in Jellalabad, and that if he ever attained it at all, the attempt must be made in the night. He was without a guide; he knew not the way, and his dress and complexion would render him to every shepherd, wayfarer, and marauding horseman, apparent, as a Feringhee and an enemy.

The whole affair, the retreat, and the result of it, seems to be what a French writer describes as "one of those especial visitations of Fate, which draw on the devoted to their ruin, and which it is impossible for virtue to resist, or human wisdom to foresee."

After seven days and nights of incessant fighting; after the perpetual ringing of musketry, the yells of the Afghans, the varied cries of those who perished in agony under their hands; after all the truly infernal uproar and mad excitement in those dark and narrow Passes, the unbroken silence around him now, seemed intense and oppressive. He could almost imagine that he heard it; stirred though it was only by the low hum of insect life among the withered leaves and _coss_, or wild mountain grass, that lay drifted by the wind in heaps within the cave, and on which he lay so sad and weary.

"Now," thought he, after some hours had passed, "now that this horrible row is all over, I'll have a quiet weed--smoke a peaceful calumet of Cavendish;" and he drew the materials therefor from the pocket of his poshteen.

Waller had always been solicitous about the colouring of that same calumet, as he styled his meerschaum pipe, which, by the bye, had been a gift from his friend Polwhele--poor Jack Polwhele--who was lying under that ghastly pile of dead on the knoll, where his jovial soul had ebbed through his death-wound, and where in his kind heart, and on his pallid lips, as he breathed his last, his mother's name had mingled with that of his God;--and so, as Waller smoked amid the silence and gloom of the wintry eve, tears rolled over his cheek--the bitter tears of a brave man's rage and grief.

This was not war but carnage!

To Waller it seemed as if a gory curtain had fallen between him and all his past life. Where were now his companions of the parade, the mess, and the race-course? Where the brave rank and file, that had stood by him shoulder to shoulder, and every man of whom deemed Captain Waller a friend, as much as an officer? Where were the faces and voices of all he had known and loved? As he lay there alone in cold and darkness, his emotions were somewhat akin to those described as being felt by the _last man_, when the whitening skeletons of nations were around him, and when all the human world had--himself excepted--passed away.

"Mabel and Rose--my own Mabel, where is she?" he muttered again and again.

Love left his heart with her; she was, like others, a hostage--a thing unheard of in modern wars;--a prisoner--too probably a victim! In such terrible hands, what worse fate could she have? She had been diplomatically torn from him, by a treaty that proved futile, and which cast dishonour on our arms. Duty had compelled him to march with his men; for the stern duty of the soldier had to rise superior to the soft affection of the lover, and now he was there alone, with the memory of her last tearful kiss lingering on his lips.

"My beautiful darling--my loved, my lost Mabel!" murmured the usually matter-of-fact Waller; "oh, why were you reft from me? God," he added, looking up imploringly in the gathering gloom, "shall we ever meet again?"

He knew that no fear of future vengeance would deter the Afghans from committing any outrage on their captives. In their utter ignorance of the locality, the nature, and vast resources of Britain, they can form no correct idea of her power by sea or land. They vaguely know all Europe by the general term of Feringhistan, or the Country of the Franks; and that ships from there come to Bombay and Bassora (the Bassora of Sindbad the Sailor), to Madras, and Calcutta; and that a Queen rules one portion of it--a dreary island somewhere in the sea; and their learned _Moollahs_ were wont to assert, that her red soldiers, by their close resemblance to each other, the extreme similarity of their uniform and motions, must all be the sons of one mother.

An intense thirst, which successive handfuls of snow failed to allay, hunger, and extreme cold from lying so long in that dark den in such a season, made Waller hail the descending night, and with sombre satisfaction he quitted his lurking place, to seek on foot the road to Jellalabad.

"In England," thought he, "the Poor Law guardians have studied at times to discover upon how little mankind can be kept alive; and there have been learned philosophers who declared it possible for people to exist without food at all! By Jove, I wish they had been on this retreat from Cabul, and all their problems would soon have been solved."

He heard now the voices of the jackals revelling over their ghastly meal on the hill of Gundamuck, and shudderingly he turned away in the opposite direction. Snow covered all the country; but the footsteps and horse tracks of those who had pursued Doctor Brydone were, for a time, a sufficient indication of the route he was to follow. He had lost his shako in the late conflict, but the loonghee of a dead Afghan supplied its place.

The night was clear; the deep blue sky was full of brilliant stars; around him the stupendous mountains of the Khyber range towered on either side of the way in silence and solemnity, that proved something awful to the then oppressed mind of the poor fugitive, who wished from his soul that he had been as dark in complexion and as black of eye as his friend Polwhele; for Waller's face and hair were of the thorough Saxon type, and hence any attempt to pass himself off as a fair-visaged Oriental was impossible, for swarthy indeed is the fairest of them. He had never possessed such a hand-book as "Afghani before breakfast," or "without a master," if such a thing ever existed; but he had contrived to pick up enough of the strange polyglot medley forming the language of the natives, to have aided any disguise, could he have found one.

Voices and the clatter of hoofs, the latter partially deadened by the snow, fell on his ear, before he had proceeded a mile; and, on the whiteness that stretched in distance far away before him, appeared the dark figures of a group of mounted men approaching rapidly.

Near the roadside there stood, and doubtless still stands, a little musjid, or temple, and over its tiny dome one giant poplar towered skyward, like a dark gothic spire. The strangers might halt and pray there, profuse piety being an element in the Afghan character; but it was equally probable they might not; so, as it was his only hope of concealment, he hastened to avail himself of it--but too late; he was already observed, and a series of wild shouts made his heart sicken, as the horsemen came galloping up, unslinging from their backs their long juzails as they advanced.

These people proved to be Amen Oollah Khan, a warrior known as Zohrab Zubberdust (_i.e._, the overbearing), and others, who had that forenoon pursued Doctor Brydone almost to the gates of Jellalabad, and, on the way, murdered his hapless companion, Doctor Harper, whose horse had failed him within four miles of the city. They were richly accoutred; each had a gilded shield slung on his back, and wore a round steel cap, furnished with a flap of chain-mail covering the neck, and two upright points, like spear heads, that glittered in the starlight.

"Death to the Kaffir! death to the Feringhee!" they cried with one accord.

"I am no Kaffir," replied Walter (standing on the steps of the musjid, and ready to sell his life dearly), "but a Mussulman, like yourselves."

"Liar, and son of a liar! I see the dress of a red Feringhee under your poshsteen," said Amen Oollah, and in succession he, Zohrab, and two others, snapped their matchlocks at him; but they had become so foul by recent and incessant use, that the balls had been forced down with difficulty, the powder and matches were alike damp, and fortunately not one would explode.

"Hah!" said Waller, with great presence of mind, though fearing he might be recognised by Amen Oollah, who had frequently seen him in the streets of Cabul, "you see that the hand of the Prophet interposes, and does not permit you to kill me."

"We shall soon prove that," replied the Khan, unsheathing his sabre; but impressed, nevertheless, by what seemed the genuine belief in fatalism, which is a peculiarity of the Mohammedan faith; so he deliberately placed the edge on Waller's throat, and said--

"To the proof of what you assert. If you are a Mussulman, repeat the _Kulma_; if in one word, however small, you fail, your head and heels shall lie together on the snow."

Waller had his own sword drawn, and was prepared to run it through the heart of Amen Oollah if he felt himself failing. It was a critical moment; he knew that the edge of an Afghan sabre was sharp as a razor; he felt that he was never born to be a religious martyr; so thinking in his heart--as, perhaps, the great Galileo thought, when in the bonds of the Inquisition--"May God forgive me!" by a little stretch of memory he repeated the entire Kulma, or creed of Mohammed, on which Amen Oollah seemed satisfied, and sheathed his sword. But now Zohrab Zubberdust, a handsome and dashing Afghan gentleman, one of those soldiers of fortune who possessed only his sword and his horse, and thus served Ackbar Khan for three rupees per diem, said,--

"Khan Sahib, how comes a true believer to have a face and beard so fair?"

"A Persian taught me to dye my beard yellow; and as for my face, I am a Turk of Stamboul," replied Waller, boldly.

As not one of them had ever seen a Turk of Feringhistan, these answers seemed to perplex them.

"Then why here?" asked Zohrab, suspiciously.

"I served Shah Sujah, and have left him, for fate is against him, and he shall never reign in Afghanistan," said Waller, thinking in his heart, "How many falsehoods must I tell to deceive these artful savages?"

"You are right," said Amen Oollah, grimly; "but as we deem that in serving the Shah you have been guilty of a crime, I give you as a slave to Nouradeen Lai. You shall help him to plough the land."

"Salaam and thanks, Khan Sahib--I have need of a sturdy servant, as I shot one in a fit of passion lately," said a horseman, a powerfully built and venerable looking Afghan, to whose horse-girth Waller speedily found himself attached by a rope which was passed round his waist. To resist, would be simply to court death; and he was thus conducted, a prisoner, into a valley of the mountains. In fact, his captors were probably too glutted with slaughter to kill him, and so spared him for the time. But he felt that his existence would be at the caprice of his owner, Nouradeen Lai, whose first act of power was to take away his regimental sword and belt, after another acquisitive Afghan had possessed himself of his gold repeater, his purse and rings.

"What fools, and sons of burnt fathers, you Feringhees were to come among us here in Afghanistan, to put upon our throne a king we loathed, in lieu of Dost Mohammed," said Nouradeen, as they proceeded; "you will now know how true it is, that though two Dervishes may sleep on one carpet, two kings cannot reign in one kingdom. But the will of God be cdone! The whole world depends upon fate and fortune. It is one man's destiny to be depressed--the other's to be exalted."

"Canting old humbug!" thought Waller, who learned ere long that his agricultural owner was especially a man of proverbs, like Sancho Panza.

The farmer, and two other horsemen, with much ceremony bade adieu to Amen Oollah Khan; but the latter only waved his hand and said--

"Adieu till we meet again--most likely before Jellalabad," and, with his armed followers, galloped into that terrible pass, where an entire army, with all its debris, strewed the way for miles upon miles, back even into the gates of the burned cantonments.

"So those rascals think of beating up Sale's garrison," thought Waller, with reference to the parting words of the Khan.

As Nouradeen entered the hedgerows which bordered the compounds of his farm-house and yard, he unslung his juzail, which seemed in somewhat better order than those of his companions, and, wheeling half round in his saddle, fired a shot rearward, Parthian-wise, and brought down a large eagle that was soaring high in mid air.

"Steel commands everything, and now in addition to the steel--the swords and lances of our forefathers--we have bullets, praised be God!" he exclaimed, flourishing his clumsy old matchlock, exactly such a weapon as might have figured at Marston Moor, or the field of Kilsythe.

Perceiving that the shot excited Waller's admiration, he drew a long brass pistol from his girdle, urged his horse to full speed, and a picturesque figure he seemed, with his flowing robes and magnificent beard floating on the wind. He then threw a lemon over his head, and, twisting his body completely round to the left, fired at it from the off flank of his horse, and pierced it as it was in the act of falling.

"Now," said he, with a grim smile, "should you attempt to escape without ransom, my ball will follow you thus surely--yea, did go far as the arrow of Arish, which was shot at sunrise, and did not fall till sunset. A soldier, you should remember, that even were you to conquer all the world, death at last will conquer you."

"It is unlawful to make a slave of a true believer," said Waller.

"One may repeat the Kulma, and not be a very true believer after all," replied the shrewd old Afghan, with a gleam of intense cunning in his glittering eyes; "nay, nor even a Turk of Roum," he added, meaning Constantinople; and hence Waller knew that he was suspected.

The farmer's wife--Nouradeen Lai had but one helpmate--saw how pale and wan their prisoner looked, and speedily set some food before him; a pillau of rice, dhye (or sour curds), odious stuff, which he ate with his fingers in the fashion of the country. One or two of "Malcolm's plums" (as the Persians and Afghans call the potato), with a little ghee or clarified butter, completed his simple repast. As he ate, falling to without uttering "Bismillah!" an omission which his captors did not fail to remark, he thought that cookery must be a sublime science at home--a veritable branch of the fine arts; but hunger is ever an excellent seasoning to any meal.

The snow had now begun to melt fast, and for four days Waller was kept a close prisoner, without a chance of escape, though he brooded over it incessantly, and writhed in spirit to be thus detained from his duty in Jellalabad, where doubtless the task of vengeance--it might be the deliverance of the unhappy hostages--had already begun. Besides, he was intensely bored by the hypocrisy of having to enact the part of Mussulman, by the pretended prayers and genuflexions, upon a piece of coarse felt, for the old man Nouradeen watched him closely. In all this Waller salved his conscience by the conviction that one is scarcely answerable for an act committed under a power one cannot resist.

On the morning of the fifth day the hills appeared in all their greenery; the sunshine was bright, and the atmosphere was clear and calm.

"The snow is gone," said Nouradeen; "when spring comes, the bones of your people will be whitening like ivory among the long green grass in the passes of the Khyber and Khoord Cabul."

These words came fearfully and literally true, as the Afghans never interred one of the slain.

"But sit not there so moodily," he added to Waller; "grieve not over that which is broken, lost or burnt; after prayer we go to plough; come with me."

"Willingly," replied Waller, and his breast filled with a hope that was soon extinguished; for when he found himself between the stilts of the Afghan plough, which was of the most primitive construction, and drawn by two oxen--a machine of the mode of working which he was utterly ignorant--he perceived a little old humpbacked fellow, armed with a loaded juzail, watching all his movements, and with an expression of face which showed how much he longed for some sign of an attempt to escape, and Waller, remembering the skill of the farmer with _his_ firearms, resolved not to risk it.

He managed to direct the team, and for a few hours it occupied his mind. Waller ploughing!--Waller, the crack man, the pattern officer, the best round-dancer in the Cornish Light Infantry--he felt the situation to be intensely ludicrous, and he could have laughed but for the circumstances the situation represented--and the dreadful doubt that hung over the fate of Mabel, of Rose, and others; and frequently he paused and looked wistfully towards the hills, as he thought that, but for yonder old Mohammedan beast, with his cocked matchlock, he should make a clean pair of heels and be off. Anyway, through his ignorance of the task in hand, and the pre-occupation of his thoughts, Bob's furrows had all the curved line of beauty, and would have made a Scottish ploughman, so vain of his straight lines, faint on the spot.

So the fifth day passed and he had but one thought, the yearning to see Mabel, with the haunting terror of all she might be enduring, and that he might never see her more!

Learning by chance that he was to be secured to the plough by an iron chain the next day, he determined that, come what might, he should escape in the night. Unarmed, he had but his courage and strategy to rely upon, in a country where all men's hands were against the European, where the laws have little force, and where whatever morality there is among the people, it depends entirely upon their religious sentiments and their attachment to their khans or chiefs. Two hundred years ago, an Englishman might have found himself in pretty much the same predicament in some parts of the Scottish Highlands.

On examining the chimney of the apartment in which he was confined, he found that although the barred windows defied egress and ingress alike, he might achieve a passage to the external air by removing the bricks of unburnt clay, of which the wall was composed. He proceeded to pick out the lime with a nail softly, after darkness had set in, and after removing one, the cold night breeze from the Khyber hills blew gratefully upon his flushed face.

Another and another were speedily removed now, and in less than half an hour--during which he frequently paused with a palpitating heart, lest he might make some unlucky sound or be discovered by old Lai--he had achieved an aperture wide enough by which to creep out. He did so, and drew a long breath, as if he respired more freely now. All was still, and the darkness was profound as the silence, and a prayer of thankfulness rose to the lips of Waller, as he quitted the compound around the farmer's establishment and hastened towards the hills, with the full knowledge that in whatever direction he went, some hours must elapse before his flight could be discovered, and there was no snow by which to track his footsteps.