CHAPTER XIV.

WITH SALE'S BRIGADE.

Since that ill-omened hour and time of dread excitement, when on the disastrous day in January the ladies and other hostages were handed over to Ackbar Khan, their friends and relatives even in Afghanistan knew nothing of their actual safety--who were living, who were dead, or who were mutilated or disgraced by insults worse than death, on the route towards Toorkistan; and now the beginning of September had come.

It was only known that Ackbar's orders to Saleh Mohammed were, "to hurry them on their journey, and to butcher all the sick, and those for whom there might be no speedy conveyance."

Eight months--eight weary and harassing months of eager longing, of fierce excitement, and impatience to avenge the fallen and rescue the helpless--had passed ere the junction between General Pollock's troops and those of Sir Robert Sale was fully effected, and the advance upon Cabul, so long resolved upon, was once more begun, while Nott was pushing victoriously from Candahar on the same point, leaving Ghuznee in smoking ruins behind him.

To Waller's mind, Mabel, though an ever-prevailing thought, had become a kind of myth by that time--existent, yet non-existent, for separation was a species of living death; and he could but pray that she was still living, though in the hands of Ackbar Khan. So a sad memory to many a husband was the face of his wife; so to many a father were the voice and smile of his child; and all knew that on their own swords, and the valour and resolution of their comrades, depended the chance of their all being ever reunited again.

Waller looked older than he was wont to do--older than his years; for he had become, like many others serving there, more grave and more thoughtful now. Fun and merriment were unknown in Pollock's army, and laughter, like many another luxury, was as scarce. With haversacks, canteens, and purses empty, and hard fighting in front, life looks far from rosy. Waller had more than once detected a most decided and long grey hair in his carefully cultivated whiskers. A grey hair!--when improvising the back of his hunting-watch as a mirror: his own elaborate rosewood dressing-case, with silver-mounted essence bottles--the parting gift of a rich aunt, from whom Bob had "expectations," was now degraded to the duty of holding cooking-spices and stuffs for pillaus and kabobs in the kitchen of a Khan; but the grey hairs--once upon a time he should have twitched them out.

"Bah! what do they matter now?" said he, and finished his toilet by clasping on his waist-belt.

Waller felt more than ever, from personal causes, inspired by an ardour in the performance of his duty, and speedily became distinguished as one of the most active and gallant officers on the staff of Sir Robert Sale, a veteran whose uninterrupted career of service dated back to the battle of Malavelly, where Harris defeated Tippoo Saib, and the storming of Seringapatam, in the closing year of the preceding century. Sale commanded one division in our Army of Vengeance,--for such it deemed itself; General M'Caskill, a stern and resolute Scotsman, led the other; and the whole under General Pollock, on being reinforced by Her Majesty 31st, the 33rd Native Light Infantry, the 1st Light Cavalry, all clad in silver grey, and a train of mountain guns (the ghalondazees of which wore picturesque oriental dresses), commenced the march towards the mighty range of mountains that lie between Jellalabad and Cabul.

McCaskill was in such feeble health that the brave old fellow had to proceed at the head of his division in a litter borne by four Hindoos.

Experience had taught our leaders the mistake of having the usual mighty encumbrances of camp-followers, the tenting and feeding of which formed the curse of our Indian armies; so, in this instance, such appendages were greatly reduced. For tents, the palls or little marquees of the sepoys were substituted. Save a single change of linen, the soldiers carried nothing in their knapsacks; the baggage of the officers was cut down to the smallest extent--Waller carried his in a valise at his saddle--and three or four had to sleep under one marquee. All the sick and wounded were left under a guard in Jellalabad; and thus the army was trimmed, pruned, and fined down to the active, well-armed, and lightly accoutred fighting-men alone.

Hence the camp had no longer the aspect usually presented by those of our Indian forces, as these usually exhibit a motley collection of coverings, to ward off the baleful dews of night or the scorching sun by day. Here and there a superb suite of tents or marquees, surrounded by squalid little erections of coloured calico, tattered cloths and blankets stretched over sticks and poles, even palm leaves being improvised when they could be had; and amid all these congeries of variously coloured masses, the flags of chiefs and colonels, the bells of arms, horses, oxen, camels, and elephants, pell mell!

A final act of individual cruelty, perpetrated by Ackbar Khan on a poor Hindoo--the same schroff, or banker, whom Mabel had seen in Cabul--greatly exasperated all ranks against him.

Hearing that our troops had begun their march, this man, whose nationality and sympathies led him to favour their interests, when making his way towards them, was overtaken, and brought before Ackbar in the castle of Buddeeabad, and was there bitterly upbraided as a traitor.

"Throw him down," he cried to his Haozir-bashes, and then drew his sabre.

Believing he was about to be beheaded, the wretched Hindoo implored mercy.

"Hold him fast," said Ackbar, baring his right arm to the elbow. "What, dog of an idolater, you wish to see the Feringhees, do you?"

By two blows of his heavy sabre, which was inscribed by a verse from the Koran, he hacked off the feet of the Hindoo above the ankles, and said mockingly--

"_Now_ you may go where you will: throw him out of doors."

Cast forth, faint and bleeding, the poor wretch, tore his turban-cloth into strips and staunched with them the hemorrhage, enabling him actually to crawl on his hands and knees to our outposts, where his appearance excited the bitterest feelings in the breasts of all the troops, European as well as native.

Rumour stated that Ackbar Khan was filled with alarm and rage, either of which might prompt him to execute some of his terrible threats on the helpless hostages; and that he was prepared for any extremity, and to lay the land waste, was evinced by the alarming noises that were heard in the Passes, ere our march began, and by the sky above the mountain-tops being nightly reddened by the blaze of burning villages which he destroyed, so that neither food nor shelter might be found by an advancing foe.

At the hill of Gundamuck, where there is a walled village surrounded by groves of cypresses, Waller saw, with some emotions of interest, the cave in which he lurked after the last fatal stand was made there, and vividly came back to memory the despair of the final struggle.

As our troops began to penetrate into the recesses of those mountains, whose names and features were so calculated to inspire mournful thoughts in all who looked on them (for there had a British army marched in, never more to come forth, being literally swallowed up), they found, as before, the ferocious Ghilzies again in position, and in thousands ready to defend their native rocks with all their native ardour, inflamed by past triumph, the hopes of future plunder, by fanaticism and pleasant doses of bhang; and from steep to steep, and from ridge to ridge, from tree to tree, and hill to hill, they defended themselves, and fought or died with stubborn and resolute bravery, harassing our troops in front, in rear, and on both flanks. Yet on pushed our columns: the dying and the dead fell fast, and remained a ghastly train to mark the rearward route; but every life lost seemed but to add to the pluck and hardihood of the survivors.

The sputtering fire of the long juzails, concentrating to a roar at times, filled all these savage defiles with countless and incessant puffs of white smoke, that started from among the grey impending rocks, where the great yellow gourds, the purple grapes, and the scarlet creepers grew in wild luxuriance; from dark and cavernous fissures and the green groves of the pine and the plane tree. Every beetling crag was fringed with curling smoke, and streaked with fire, scaring the mountain eagles high into mid air, while with every shot that helped to thin our ranks the shrill cry of _Allah Ackbar!_ (God is mighty) was echoed from side to side, to die upward, yet, we hoped, to find no echo in heaven.

A little way within the eastern entrance to the series of defiles, at the village of Jugdulluck, where the mountains are between five and six thousand feet above the sea's level, there was a peculiarly fierce encounter; for there the Afghans, led by the Arab Hadji Abdallah Osman, and inflamed to religious fury by his precepts and mad example, had fortified the summit of the Pass by earthworks and some of our own captured cannon; but, mounting the steep heights on each side, the 9th and 13th Regiments turned the flank of their position, and by the bayonet drove away the defenders amid terrible slaughter, neither side asking or hoping for quarter.

From point to point at other places were fierce contests; and now, as our soldiers opened up with the cold steel those Passes which had been closed to all Europeans for the past eight months, their onward march--a series of prolonged conflicts, in fact--exhibited to them an awful and harrowing scene.