CHAPTER XXII.

CHANCE BETTER THAN DESIGN.

He was unarmed, but he never thought of the wild animals which abound on the hills and in the forests of Afghanistan. Lions are rare; but tigers, hyænas, bears, and wolves are plentiful enough, and the terrible passes of the Khyber mountains had peculiar attractions for the latter now. Yet Waller's sole anxiety was to avoid, not these, but their rivals in cruelty, the natives.

He had no guide; but he knew, by the way the range of mountains rose between him and the sky, that the great plain or vale, wherein Jellalabad is situated, and which has an average breadth of ten miles, must, when he quitted the farm-gate, lie on his right hand and not on his left. Other indication he had none, and he set out in the hope of being within sight of its walls by daybreak, or at least soon after.

The improved appearance of the highway as he proceeded, afforded proof that it led to some large city, and he pressed on with a confident and hopeful heart, sometimes between orchards containing a profusion of apple, plum, quince, and pomegranate trees, which the coming summer should see in full bloom and bearing. Now and then, softly, almost breathlessly, he would pass the skirts, but never through the straggling street, of a village, such being usually closed at each end by gates; and occasionally he crossed a little brawling stream, a tributary of the Cabul, spanned by pretty bridges of stone, ornamented with tiny towers at each end.

Anon some pariah dog, prowling out of doors--for the poor dog is in great disrepute among Mohammedans--would bay out upon the night breeze, causing him to pause and shrink for concealment close to the nearest tree or hedgerow. And now, with growing hope and heartiness, he had proceeded from the mountain-farm fully five coss, or ten English miles, on the Jellalabad road when day began to dawn on the mighty peaks of the Khyber range, and the ruddy sunlight stole gradually down their slopes into the gloomy passes and rocky ravines which intersect and separate them.

When day was fairly in, Waller began to think of seeking a place of concealment till night again fell, when he felt certain that a few miles more along that open highway must eventually bring him to some gate of Jellalabad; but an abrupt turn of the road brought him suddenly upon a village, the gates of which stood open. There in the little street some armed horsemen were grouped around a well, and many people were astir previous to departing to their work in the fields; for all the country there is beautifully cultivated, and ever covered by a profusion of the richest vegetation.

He was seen; there was a shout--spurs were applied to the horses, flight was impossible, and in half a minute he was again a prisoner, the lances levelled at his throat menacing him with death.

"A Kaffir--a Feringhee! kill him, kill him!" cried the villagers, male and female, as they crowded in wild tumult around him; even the tawny children raised their little hands against the weary wanderer, for the place was the abode of Ghazees, the wildest of Mohammedan fanatics.

"Bismillah! there is one yet alive!" exclaimed a horseman.

"But what said Ackbar Khan?--may the sun be his star, the new moon his stirrup-iron--one was to be left to tell the tale," exclaimed another, mercifully interposing his lance between Waller and the others; "and this is he."

"Nay, one Kaffir has already got into Jellalabad--it is enough; let us have this one's head," was the general cry which rose to a mingled yell, and dark eyes flashed, and white teeth were ground around him. So poor Waller began to fear that he was the 'last man' after all, and worse off than when ploughing for old Nouradeen Lai. However, he kept close to the young chief who seemed disposed to protect him, and who was accoutred with a steel cap and shield.

"The Prophet wrote at birth on each man's brow the day he was to die, and your time is to-day, O Kaffir!" exclaimed one, making a vicious thrust with his gaily tasselled lance, which, had it not been struck up by his protector's hand, had ended Waller's career there and then.

"What business has a dog of a Feringhee with such a beard as that?" cried a woman; "it is unendurable."

"I didn't make it," said Waller, simply.

"Oho. This is the Toorkoman of Roum!" said the young horseman with the steel cap, in whom Waller now recognised Zohrab Zubberdust; "he has escaped from old Nouradeen Lai; well--he shall not escape from me. These Feringhees are excellent grooms, and I want one. Bismillah! it is written--let us go--I shall protect you."

Like many a Christian, Zubberdust the Mussulman had the spirit of avarice and treachery in his heart; but as an Afghan mountaineer it was tempered with something of honour; for, strange to say, honour may exist among Mohammedans, as well as among Christians, without an atom of morality.

So Waller found himself marched off in a direction precisely opposite to that which he had been pursuing; and he had the additional tantalisation of seeing, about six miles distant, the picturesque Bala Hissar, or citadel of Jellalabad, which he could recognise from an engraving he had once seen; and ere midday he was conveyed by Zubberdust and his people to one of the numerous little castles or fortlets called _kotes_, that stud all the country in the neighbourhood of the city, which has always been the winter residence of the kings of Cabul; and there he was set at once to groom the horses, with a distinct notice that if he attempted to quit the fort, which was a square edifice furnished with a round loopholed tower at each angle, and surrounded by a wet ditch, wherein innumerable pink and white water lilies floated, he would be shot without mercy.

Before the gate were two brass six-pounder guns, taken from Elphinstone's unfortunate army.

Waller acquiesced with a groan in his breast. Well, thought he, working as a groom and rubbing down Zubberdust's beautiful horse, which had come from the land of the Usbec Tartars, was more congenial than ploughing; and hope suggested that the very animal he tended might gain him liberty; but his new master seemed to be merely a visitor at the fort, which belonged to an old Hazir Bashi of the King's Guards, and after remaining there for ten days, he departed to rejoin Amen Oollali Khan. Prior to doing so, with great liberality he presented Waller, as an excellent groom, to a wealthy grazier of camels, named Jubar Khan, who was passing that way with several of these solemn-looking quadrupeds and some yaboos or Cabul ponies, which he meant to dispose of in Bhokara.

Seeing that Waller appeared crushed by the prospect before him, Zohrab said, ere he went,

"Think yourself happy, for if Ackbar Khan were to get you, he might do as he has done to others, chain you to a stone in a vault, dark and cheerless as the tomb of a miser. Dogs!" he added, true to his overbearing nature: "you came hither thinking to make us crumb-eaters of Shah Sujah! Bah! the cup of the covetous, saith the proverb, is filled with the dust of the grave. And where lie the covetous now? in the passes of Khoord Cabul!"

With something of despair gathering in his heart, Waller set forth in company with the grazier and others whom the latter employed as syces, and who were all well armed.

To dissemble he felt was his best plan, and he affected such perfect cheerfulness, made himself so useful in tending, watering, and grooming the camels and ponies, that he quickly won the entire goodwill and confidence of Jubar Khan, so much so that, after journeying for three days towards the hills of Hindoo Kush, on a valuable camel falling quite lame, he actually left Waller in care of it, at a species of camp formed by some Afghan shepherds and their families, whose tents of coarse black camlet were pitched in a sheltered spot by the bank of a beautiful stream.

Jubar Khan passed on his way, desiring Waller, in whose skill he trusted much, to rejoin him with the camel on a certain day at a khan or caravanserai among the mountains,--one of those one-storied, quadrangular edifices, full of bare rooms, built by the wayside for the accommodation of travellers, and the erection of which is considered one of the most meritorious acts that a Hindoo or Mussulman can perform.

Waller gladly saw the dark figures of Jubar Khan, his people and property, vanish into a pass of the mountains, where they seemed to go right into the setting sun, which shed through it a blaze of crimson light; and then he set himself zealously to tend the ailing camel, in the hope that when well he should depart therewith on a journey of his own. In three days the camel was quite restored; but on the morning of the fourth, when Waller went as usual to groom it, the animal was gone!

It had been stolen in the night, by whom, all pretended ignorance; and Waller, who immediately affected great anxiety to rejoin his master the grazier, was told that he must remain where he was, "as a hostage for the missing camel, and that as so excellent a groom could not be an indifferent shepherd, he would be useful in tending the sheep."

A crook was put in his hand, a brass lotah for drinking, a few chupatties for food were given him, and he was set to watch a flock of dhoombas, or those Persian sheep that have tails nearly a foot broad, are almost entirely composed of fat, and form the most valuable stock of those nomadic dwellers in tents among whom he now found himself. By the poor agriculturists he was however treated with great kindness.

Farther than ever from Jellalabad now, without money, arms, or a horse, his clothes in rags, his boots almost worn away, Bob Waller sat like one in a stupor by the side of a rivulet that trickled through the pasture where the sheep were grazing; and as he looked from the green mountains to the black tents that dotted their slope, he asked of himself, whether his present existence or his past was the dream.

"So here have fate and the fortune of war cast me! a Turk, a ploughman, a groom, a shepherd," he sighed; "by Jove! what the deuce shall I be next? The ancient sceptics doubted the reality of everything--and I begin to think they were right."

All was still, save when a stork or crow alighted on the granite rocks that overhung the mountain rivulet, or a fleet antelope shot like a spirit across the valley; and so would pass the weary day, Bob Waller not watching the sheep, but the mountain shadows, changing from the eastward to the westward, while he sighed for a glass of Madeira and a biscuit, a glass of pale ale and a "quiet weed," and thought of the old time of tiffin in the jolly mess-bungalow, and the faces of those he should never see there again.

At night, crouching on a piece of xummal (or coarse blanket) and covered with sheepskins, Waller would dream at times of Mabel's bright face and merry laugh; but more often, perhaps, of those terrible seven days and seven nights of the retreat through the snowy passes, where the living trod sullenly, doggedly, on over the dead, till they too fell, to be trod on in turn. Horrid phantoms haunted him. Had he outlived, out-trodden all? Alas, it almost seemed so. Shots would seem to ring in his drowsy ear, and he fancied it was the Afghan juzailchees again; anon he would think himself at home in pleasant Cornwall; that he was after the brown pheasants within sight of the sounding sea, or among the quails on wild and rugged Lundy Isle; and then he would start to wakefulness and lie for hours, revolving in his mind the means, the chances of reaching Jellalabad; but, alas! so much time had elapsed, that he might only reach it to find that the garrison had abandoned it to save the hostages from death, or that the city was besieged by the victorious Afghans!

But now he was to have a proof of how often chance was better than the deepest laid design.

Joharah, the wife of the shepherd with whom Jubar Khan had left him, and whose name when translated signifies "a jewel," was a woman of singular kindness of heart, sweetness of disposition, and not without moderate pretensions to beauty. She was unusually kind to Waller, and did all in her power to alleviate the wretched condition to which fate had reduced him. Her husband was wont to boast that "she knew the language of the birds," and hence that they would inform _her_ if Waller attempted to escape, for to understand the language of the feathered tribe was peculiarly one of the boasted sciences of the Arabians. The art is frequently referred to in the "Thousand and One Nights," and tradition records that Balkis, Queen of Sheba, had a lapwing which conveyed all her messages verbally to King Solomon. Waller could have smiled on being told all this; and he wished in his soul he had no other informants to dread than the birds that twittered about the valley.

Joharah, the Afghan woman, had remarked the growing depression that seemed to prey upon the spirit of Waller, and she was not without some interest in him, for the fairness of the European complexion contrasted in her eye pleasantly and favourably with the extreme darkness of the people around her. She had more than once detected him with a lock of Mahel Trecarrel's bright brown hair in his fingers, and with a woman's acuteness she speedily divined that thereby hung "a tale." One day she surprised him thus occupied when he was seated moodily and alone under a pistachio tree that grew near where their tents were pitched. Approaching softly, she laid a hand timidly on his shoulder, and after glancing hastily about to see if they were observed, she bent her dark bright eyes on his, and said--

"I dreamt of you last night."

"Of me?"

"Yes; even by the side of my husband," she added, with a smile, that was not without a dash of coquetry in it.

"Indeed!" replied Waller, perplexed, and fearing that if this was the prelude to a flirtation, his troubles would be thereby seriously increased.

"I saw you clad in _green_, our holy colour, and accept that as a sign that I must befriend you, and send you to her you love."

"I thank you; 'to her I love,' repeated Waller tremulously, while a flush suffused his cheek.

"You are very sad and gentle," said Joharah.

"The thoughts of _her_ make me so," said Waller.

"Ah! the perfume of her presence is about you still," said the Afghan woman in her figurative language; "she has been unto you what the rose was to the piece of clay in the little story of Sadee."

"I do not understand you."

"'One day,' says Sadee, 'when I was in the bath, a friend of mine put into my hand a piece of sweetly scented clay. I took it between my fingers, and said,

"'Art thou musk or ambergris, for thy perfume charms me?'

"'I was but a humble piece of clay,' it replied; 'but I was some time in the society of a rose; the sweet quality of my companion was communicated to me, otherwise I should be only a bit of clay, as I appear to be.' So has it been with you."

"Perhaps so," replied Waller, smiling at this strange anecdote.

"It is Jellalabad you would reach?"

"Yes; how far are we from it?"

"Fifty cosses."

"A hundred of our miles!" thought Waller, and his spirit sank.

"Undisguised, you can never escape my husband's people, or hope to reach it safely; but I shall provide for all that."

"You will not deceive me?" said Waller anxiously, as he feared some snared

"No, I swear it; be of good courage and you shall soon be safe."

The following day, when most of the shepherds had gone to prayer at a musjid among the mountains, leaving the women and female children behind, as the sexes never pray together in the mosques, she conducted Waller into the inner portion of their tent--her own apartment--where discovery would have ensured him instant death. With scissors she clipped off closely his long fair beard and mustaches; she stained his face, ears, and neck with walnut juice and wood ashes; his hair she disguised by smearing it with more ashes and _ghee_--a process under which Waller, usually so dainty in his toilet, rather winced. She took away and buried his poshteen and tattered uniform, and made him, in its place, put on the red dress of a Hindoo Fakir. She slung a brass drinking lotah to his girdle of cord, gave him some chupatties and other food, and, placing a staff in his hand, showed him the route to pursue, a narrow path among the mountains, by which he could avoid a rencontre with the returning shepherds, and strike on the direct road for Jellalabad.

Waller's heart was filled with genuine gratitude; but he had only his earnest thanks to bestow on this good woman, who hastened his departure; and in less than two hours after she had thus transformed him, he had left the black tents of the shepherds several miles behind him.

In no other disguise than this could he have been so safe from discovery. In the character of a Fakir he might beg with impunity, revile and anathematise with a vociferation that inspired terror, or he might remain obstinately silent, according to the pretended humour or real emergency of the moment. Thus, as none might dare to question his motives, his supposed sacred calling rendered him safe alike from interruption, inquiry, or suspicion, and he went on his way rejoicing.

He had many strange and quaint adventures, but encountered no more perils by the way he had to pursue on foot. His great stature and sturdy figure won him the special favour of the women, particularly of those with whom he conversed at the wayside wells; and in many instances he discovered that pleasant little perquisites must often fall to the share of Fakirs and Dervishes; for ladies contended for the honour of feeding him, and pressed upon him tillas, and even mohurs of gold, to have refused which would have been totally untrue to his clerical character. Once he had a narrow escape from encountering Osman Abdallah the Arab Hadji, the same fanatic whom he had run through the body on the day the Envoy was assassinated, and whom he saw asleep, too probably intoxicated with bhang, on a piece of mat, at the door of a village khan. On another occasion he had to endure for several miles the society of a rival Fakir--a Pandarom enthusiast, who wore an iron garden-gate, of considerable weight and size, riveted round his neck as a penance, which excited the charity and fear of all who beheld him; but on the fortieth day after the retreat from Cabul began, Waller, to his joy, saw once more before him the vast and fertile plain of Jellalabad, the stately city with all its white wails and round towers, and its green background of magnificent mountains, many of them being wooded to the summit; but, to his eye, the most pleasing features in the scene were the scarlet coats of the sentinels on the ramparts of the Bala Hissar, on which the union-jack was waving in the morning wind.

Waller was, perhaps, not much given to prayer, but his emotions of gratitude to Heaven were great and keen when at last he found himself passing between the Piper's Hill and the old Mosque that stands south of the city, round the walls of which he had to proceed between the Shah's garden and the great citadel to reach the Peshawur Gate, where a guard of Her Majesty's 13th Light Infantry (Prince Albert's own) was posted; and the astonishment of the soldiers, when they heard themselves accosted in pure English by a Hindoo Fakir, was intense; but the officer in command, Lieutenant Sinclair--the same ingenious fellow who had built the pleasure boat during the previous and happier winter at Cabul--now came hastily forward.

"Waller--Bob Waller, by all that's wonderful!" he exclaimed, recognising an old friend in spite of his filthy disguise; "so you, too, have escaped, after all?"

"Yes, I--but poor Jack Polwhele, Devereaux, Burgoyne, and all the rest, have perished--all--all!" replied Waller, with deep emotion, as the men of the 13th crowded about him. "The bravest and the best are always cut off first; but, save me, all who came through the Khyber passes have gone to God!"

"Trevelyan of yours, and Dr. Brydone, of the Shah's army, are safe with us; so three have escaped that terrible carnage."

"And what of the hostages?"

The face of Sinclair--a Scot from the banks of the Thurso, and, like all his surname, tall, grey-eyed, and fair-haired--grew dark as he replied,

"Elphinstone, the general, is dead--he expired in the hands of the enemy, who insulted his body, and beat the head with stones. The tribes are all in arms now--a regular 'gathering of the clans,' we should call it in Scotland. Ackbar Khan has fulfilled his threat, we are told, by sending the ladies for sale to the chiefs in Toorkistan; but nothing is certain save that, by a combined movement on Cabul, we are about to take a terrible vengeance."

Waller groaned, and ground his teeth in silence, for he was too much of an Englishman to make a scene, or give vent to the emotions that maddened him as he thought of Mabel, of her helpless companions, and the awful mystery that overhung the fate of Rose.

The hostages, to the number of eighty-eight officers and soldiers, with thirty-three females (three being wives of soldiers) and children, were at the mercy of barbarians, and what might have happened to them by that period? How many of them, husband and wife, parent and child, must have caressed and embraced each other despairingly from time to time, with only one idea in their minds,--that the lips they touched, the eyes they looked into with tenderness and love, the form they held, that was warm and living, might all belong to a dead and mangled corpse ere the dawn opened or the night closed!