CHAPTER VI.

AT JELLALABAD.

Downie Trevelyan's applications to the War Office, the Horse Guards, to the Military Secretary for the Home Department of the East India Company, and even questions asked in his place in the House of Lords, were unremitting for a time, on the affairs of Afghanistan, as he wished to elicit some information concerning the safety of his son, and the probable _non_-safety of Lieutenant Devereaux, more particularly; but he totally failed in extracting more than vague generalities, or that one was believed to be safe with Sir Robert Sale's garrison in Jellalabad; and that the other was supposed to be a prisoner of war with many others. How long he might remain so, if surviving, or how long he had remained so, if dead, no one could tell; but dark rumours had reached Peshawur, that the male hostages had been beheaded in the Char Chowk of Cabul, while the females had been sold to the Tartars.

On the assassination of the Shah Sujah, whose ally we had so foolishly become by the mistaken policy of the Earl of Auckland, the prince, his son, had gained possession of the Bala Hissar, the guns and garrison of which gave him for a time full sway over the city of Cabul, when he made the cunning, plotting, and ambitious Ackbar Khan his Vizier.

The latter, however, always on the watch, and by nature suspicious, intercepted a letter written by his young master to General Nott, who commanded our troops in Candahar. This contained some amicable proposals, quite at variance with the inborn hate and rancour which Ackbar bore the English; and hence a quarrel ensued at the new court.

The prince demanded that the hostages, male and female--the fair Saxon beauty of some of the latter was supposed to have some influence in the request--left by the deceased General Elphinstone, should be delivered up to him, without question or delay.

Ackbar sternly refused to comply, and it was on this that the young Shah wrote to General Nott, urging him to march at once on Cabul to release the captives; and, moreover, to free the city from the interference and overweening tyranny of Sirdir, who thereupon resolved to take strong measures, and, with the aid of Amen Oollah Khan, Zohrab Zubberdust, and some others, made his new Sovereign captive. The latter escaped by making a hole in the roof of his prison; a purse of mohurs, a sharp sword, and a fleet horse, enabled him to reach in safety the cantonments of the British General, to whom he gave a sad detail of the miseries to which the prisoners, especially the delicate ladies, were subjected.

This movement was nearly the means of causing the destruction of all who were left at Ackbar's mercy. All communication between them and the troops in Jellalabad was cut off more strictly and hopelessly than ever; and Ackbar Khan swore by the Black Stone of Mecca, and by many a solemn and fearful oath, that "the moment he should hear of the approach of British troops again towards Cabul, the hostages should, each and all, man, woman, and child alike, be sold as slaves to the Usbec Tartars! And remember," he added, with clenched teeth and flashing eyes, to Zohrab the Overbearing, and others who heard him; "that my word is precious to me, even as the _Mohur Solimani_--the seal of Solomon Jared was to him!"

This was the signet of the fifth monarch of the world after Adam; and the holder thereof had, for the time, the entire command of the elements, of all demons, and all created things.

"Now," he exclaimed, with fierce vehemence, "I cannot violate my oath, for as the sixteenth chapter of the Koran says, '_I have made God a witness over me!_'"

Hence, perhaps, the rumour that came to Peshawur, and thus any attempt to save or succour them, would, it seemed, but accelerate their ruin, for if once removed to Khoordistan, they should never, never be heard of more, nor could they be traced among the nomadic tribes who dwell in that vast region of Western Asia, known as the "country of the Khoords."

The last that, as yet, was known of them, was that they were all in charge of an old Khan, named Saleh Mohammed, and shut up in a fortress three miles from Cabul. There they were kept in horrible suspense as to their future fate; and to them now were added nine of our officers who had fallen into Ackbar's hands, when, in the month of August, he recaptured the city of Ghuznee.

How many Christian companions in misfortune were with the Ladies Sale and Macnaghten, the garrisons in Jellalabad and Candahar knew not; neither did they know who, out of the original number taken in the passes, were surviving now those sufferings of mind and body which they all had to undergo. Among them was one poor lady, the widow of an officer, who had the care of eight young children, to add to her mental misery.

The steady and unexpected refusal of Sir Robert Sale to evacuate Jellalabad, completely baulked all the plans of Ackbar Khan, who supplemented his threatening messages by investing the city in person at the head of two thousand five hundred horse and six thousand five hundred juzailchees; but fortunately Sir Robert had collected provisions for three months, and made a vigorous defence, though the lives or liberties of the hostages, among whom were his own wife and daughter, were held in the balance, and he trusted only to his artillery, the bayonets and the stout hearts of his little garrison, who, in addition to the assaults and missiles of the Afghans, had to contend with earthquakes; for in one month more than a hundred of those throes of nature shook the city, crumbling beneath their feet the old walls they were defending.

In daily expectation of being relieved, Sale's stout English heart never failed him, for he had learned through our faithful friend, Taj Mohammed, the ex-vizier, that Colonel Wild, with a force, was marching to his aid from one quarter, while General Pollock was crossing the Punjaub from another. Yet a long time, he knew, must elapse before the latter could traverse six hundred miles; and ere long came the tidings that Wild had totally failed, either by force of arms or dint of bribery, to achieve a march through the now doubly terrible Khyber Pass.

General Nott, however, held out in Candahar, and, on receiving some supplies and reinforcements; he was ready to co-operate with Sale and Pollock in a joint advance upon Cabul, to rescue the hostages at all hazards, or, if too late for that, to avenge their fate and the fate of our slaughtered army by a terrible retribution.

A severe defeat sustained by Ackbar Khan, when Sale, on the 7th of August, made a resolute sortie and cut his army to pieces, taking two standards, four of our guns lost at Cabul, all his stores and tents, relieved Jellalabad of his presence; and in this state were matters while Waller and Audley Trevelyan were serving there, doing any duty on which they might be ordered, foraging, trenching, and skirmishing, for they were unattached to any regiment; and the former was still ignorant as to the fate of his _fiancée_, the bright-faced and auburn-haired Mabel Trecarrel, and equally so as to that of her sister and his friend Denzil. He had long since reckoned the two latter as with the dead, and mourned for them as such; for he knew nothing of their being retained as special "loot" by Shereen Khan, who now kept himself aloof from Ackbar, of whom he had conceived a truly Oriental jealousy and mistrust.

Though so near them, Waller knew no more concerning the number, treatment, or the safety of the hostages held for the evacuation of the city he had assisted to defend, than those to whom Downie Trevelyan was applying in London--perhaps less.

To the original number of captives were now added thirty more, from the following circumstance, which in some of its details is curiously illustrative of the cunning and avaricious nature of the Afghan mountaineers. A pretended friendly _cossid_, or messenger, arrived at Jellalabad, bearer of a letter from Captain Souter, of Her Majesty's 44th Regiment, dated from a village near the hill of Gundamuck, detailing the last stand made there by the few unhappy survivors of Elphinstone's army, and adding that he and Major Griffiths, of the 37th Regiment, were the prisoners of a chief who, on a sufficient ransom being paid--a thousand rupees for each--would send them to Jellalabad with their heads on their shoulders. The brave fellows of the 13th Light Infantry instantly subscribed a thousand rupees at the drum-head; a thousand more were collected with difficulty by their now-impoverished officers; and then came a proposal to ransom twenty-eight privates of the 13th and 44th Regiments, who were in the hands of the same chief, for a _lac_ of rupees. By incredible efforts, and by encroachment on the military chest, this sum was sent with certain messengers, who, by a previously concerted scheme, were waylaid and robbed of it by men sent by Ackbar Khan, who, seizing the thirty Europeans, added them to the other hostages whose lives or liberties were to pay for the surrender of Jellalabad!

The poor soldiers had given all they possessed in the world, save their kits and ammunition, to save their comrades from perilous bondage, and had given it in vain. They had but the consolation of having done for the best.

Amid even the exciting bustle of military duty, the reflections of Waller were sometimes intolerable. He could never for a moment forget. Though he was not, as a matter-of-fact young English officer, prone to flights of romantic fancy, imagination would force upon him with poignant horror all that Mabel might be forced to endure at the hands of those on whose mercy she and her companions were cast by a fate that none could have foreseen, especially during the pleasant days of the year that was passed at Cabul, when the race-course, the band-stand, picnics, hunting-parties, morning drives, and rides to see Sinclair's boat upon the lake, tiffin parties at noon, others for whist or music in the evening, made up the round of European social life there, ere Mohammed Ackbar Khan came to the surface again with his deep-laid plots for aggrandisement and revenge.

Mabel Trecarrel, his affianced wife, so gently soft and lady-like--her image was ever before him, her voice ever in his ear, and the varying expressions of her clear grey eyes, with all her winning ways, came keenly and vividly to memory, more especially in the lonely watches of the night, when muffled in his poshteen, with only a Chinsurrah cheroot to soothe his nerves and keep him warm, he trod from post to post visiting his sentinels, or listened for the sounds that might precede an Afghan assault, or perhaps an earthquake; for the troops had both to encounter, though often nothing came but the melancholy howl of the jackal on the night wind, as it sighed over the vast plain around the city of Jellalabad--the Zarang of the historians of Alexander.

He had frequent thoughts of returning to Cabul in disguise as an Afghan. He had already been pretty successful in his Protean attempts to conceal his identity; but Sir Robert Sale would by no means accord him permission to risk his life again in a manner so perilous; so, as partial inactivity was maddening to him, after Ackbar Khan's defeat had left all the avenues from the city open, he volunteered, if furnished with a suitable escort, to ride to Candahar, and urge on General Nott the policy of instantly advancing. Sir Robert Sale agreed to this, and furnished him with a despatch and a guard of twenty Native Cavalry; so Bob Waller departed, actually in high spirits, thankful that even in this small way he was doing something that might ultimately lead to the recapture of Cabul, and, more than all, the rescue of her he loved.

At a quick pace he crossed the arid desert that surrounds the city, and ascended into the well-wooded and magnificent mountain ranges that rise all around it, but more especially to the westward, whither his route lay, and his spirits rose as his party spurred onward. "What pleasure there is in a gallop!" says Paul Ferroll; "the object is before one, at which to arrive quickly; the still air becomes a wind marking the swiftness of one's pace--the fleet horse is his own master, yet one's slave; the bodily employment leaves care, thought, and time behind. One feels the pleasure of danger, because there might be danger, and yet there may be none."

So thought Waller, as he careered at the head of his party, with a cigar between his teeth, the which to keep alight while riding at full speed, he had previously dipped in saltpetre, a camp-fashion peculiar to India.

Candahar is distant from Jellalabad two hundred and seventy British miles, and, considering the state of the whole country, the undertaking, at the head of twenty horse, was a brave and arduous one; but Waller confidently set out on his expedition, after having carefully inspected his escort of picked men, and personally examined their arms, ammunition, and saddlery, as he knew not whom they might meet, or have to encounter.

By a curious coincidence, on the very day he bade adieu to his brother-officer, Audley Trevelyan, and other friends, to urge and effect a junction of the forces, a fresh and loud burst of indignation against the now-desponding Indian Executive was excited in the minds of Sale's troops by the arrival of a messenger with a startling proposal from the Governor-General, Auckland, to the effect that Jellalabad was _not_ a place to retain any longer; that a retreat was to be made from there to Peshawur; that, in effect, the whole of Afghanistan was to be--as Ackbar Khan wished it--abandoned by our forces, and that the helpless women and children, wounded and sick, at Cabul, were to be left at the mercy of irresponsible barbarians until rescued by quiet negotiations or a judicious distribution of money; and thus to have peace at any price, leaving our disgraces without remedy, our revenge unaccomplished, and our prestige destroyed--in that quarter of the world at least!

Even the English women who were captives in Afghanistan knew better than this; for, amid the earnest prayers which they put up for their liberation, they ever seemed to know that it was "not to be obtained by negotiation and ransom, _but by hard fighting_," and they had more trust in the bayonets of Sale's Brigade than in all the diplomatists in London or Calcutta.

Fortunately, ere all these disastrous arrangements could be made, a new Governor-General in the person of Lord Ellenborough arrived, and to him Sir Robert Sale despatched Audley Trevelyan with a letter descriptive of his plans, and giving details of his force; and on this mission, with a few attendants, our young staff officer and his companion departed by the way of Peshawur, the gate of Western India, on a long and arduous journey of nearly five hundred miles, by Rawul Pindee and Umritsur, to Simla, on the slopes of the Himalayas--a journey to be performed by horse and elephant, as the occasion might suit; for the railway to Lahore had not as yet sent up its whistle in the realms of Runjeet Sing.

Meanwhile Waller was proceeding in precisely an opposite direction. Compelled to avoid Ghuznee, which was now in the hands of the Afghans under Ameen Oollah Khan, he and his escort, the half-Rissallah of Native Horse, travelled among the mountains, unnoticed and uncared for by the nomadic dwellers in black tents, whose temporary settlements dotted the green slopes. His sowars all wore turbans in lieu of light-cavalry helmets; and as he too had one, with it, his poshteen, and now weather-beaten visage, he passed as a native chief of some kind; and the route they traversed was sometimes as beautiful as picturesque villages, long shady lanes overarched by mulberry-trees, orchards of plums, apples, pomegranates, and those great cherries which were introduced by the Emperor Baber, could make it. And so on they rode, by Kurraba and Killaut, till they reached Candahar in safety; and thankful indeed was honest Bob Waller when from the hills, amid the plain, he beheld the city, with its fortress crowning a precipitous rock, its long low walls of sun-dried brick, and the gilded cupola that shrines the tomb of Ahmed Shah, once "the Pearl of his age," the object of many a Dooranee's prayer, and around which so many recluses spend the remainder of their lives in repeating the Koran over and over again without end.

There Waller was welcomed by the gallant General Nott, whom he found full of stern resolution and high in hope for the future, for he was on the very eve of marching with seven thousand well-tried and well-trained troops to the aid of his friend Sale; and on the 15th of August the movement was made, _en route_ recapturing Ghuznee. It was stormed, and the Afghans again driven out at the point of the bayonet. The whole place was dismantled; and, among others, Waller had the pleasure of standing where no "unbeliever" ever stood before, in the tomb of the Sultan Mahmud, which is entirely of white marble and sculptured over with Arabic verses from the Koran. Around it, beneath the mighty cupola stand thrones of mother-of-pearl; and upon the slab that covers his grave lies the mace he used in battle, with a head of iron, so heavy that few men now-a-days can use it. The gates of this tomb were miracles of carving and beauty; they were of that hard yellow timber known as sandal-wood, which grows on the coast of Malabar and in the Indian Archipelago, and is highly esteemed for its fragrant perfume and as a material for cabinet work. Those gates had been brought as trophies from the famous Hindoo temple of Somnath in Goojerat, when sacked by Mahmud in his last expedition during the tenth century; and after hanging on his tomb for eight hundred years, they were now torn down by order of General Nott, and carried off by our victorious troops, for restoration on their original site.

Prior to all this, General Pollock with his army had reached Jellalabad, which he entered under a joyful salute of sixteen pieces of cannon, and then "forward!" was the word heard on all sides, "forward to Cabul!"

Then it was seen how the weather-beaten and hollow faces of our jaded soldiers brightened with joy and ardour, with a flush for vengeance too; for certain tidings came that, prior to this long-delayed* junction having been effected, the relentless Ackbar, true to his oath, had hurried off all his captives, male and female, in charge of Saleh Mohammed towards the confines of savage Toorkistan--tidings heard by many a husband, father, and lover with despair and rage!.....

* It was with something of waggery, perhaps, that the band of the 13th Light Infantry, on this occasion, welcomed Pollock, by playing the old Scottish melody,

"Oh, but you've been lang o' comin', Lang, lang, lang o' comin'."