Chapter XIV: The Battle of Charasiah

That something was on the _tapis_, and something like preparation, and very like consternation too, existed in and about Cabul, became evident to Leslie Colville, who suspected, though he was ignorant of the truth, that it was caused by the advance of a British army.

From the square keep of Mahmoud Shah's fort he could see mounted scouts and regular cavalry patrols hourly scouring the road, while crowds of Ghilzies and other hillmen, with banners waving and arms glittering, hovered on the mountain sides; caravans of camels laden with stores from Ghuznee, Bamian, Parwan, and elsewhere in the rear passed daily into the gates of Cabul, and more than one train of cannon too.

All this he saw, but made no comment, and he asked no questions; he was only glad and thankful to heaven when night fell or day dawned, that another twelve hours of durance were passed, and that he was still in the land of the living, or not, perhaps, sold as a slave to the Beloochees or Usbeg Tartars, till one morning, about an hour or more before dawn, Mahmoud roused him from the charpoy on which he slept, and curtly told him that he must come forth.

Leslie Colville's heart beat painfully, and his thoughts flashed home to Mary Wellwood. Was death--such a murderous death as that by which Maclain died--about to be meted out to him after all?

He was without arms--helpless; nor would arms have availed him much in that tower, garrisoned as it was by the fanatical cut-throats of Mahmoud Shah, whom he followed into the court, where two horses saddled and ready for the road were standing.

'Mount,' said Mahmoud; 'mount and come with me, while the morning is yet dark--we have not a moment to lose.'

They quitted the tower by its western gate, and took together at a hard gallop the road that led, as Colville knew by past experience, along the left bank of the Cabul river, and, leaving all the scattered forts, walled gardens, and orchards behind, runs by Khoord Cabul and the Suffaidh Sang towards the Shutargardan Pass; and now for the first time genuine hope began to dawn in his heart.

'Hark!' cried Mahmoud; 'what sound is that?'

'A British trumpet call,' replied Colville.

'Yes--and look!' said his guide, whom Colville now perceived was clad completely in spotless white, the costume of a Ghazi, assumed by those Moslem fanatics who devote themselves to death in battle for their Faith, and to achieving the death of all unbelievers.

Day was breaking now, and already the snow-clad peaks of some of those hills which are above eleven thousand feet in height, tipped with rosy dawn as with fire, stood sharply up against the deep blue sky, and, after a ten miles' ride from the vicinity of the city, Mahmoud Shah drew his reins, and again said, 'Look!'

Then Colville could see the gleam of arms in the distance, and as the gleam was steady he knew it was a sign of troops advancing.

'Your people are there,' said Mahmoud; 'join them, but keep out of my way for the future, and tempt me no more; for never again, had we eaten a peck of salt together, will I spare the life of an unbeliever; I have sworn it by the ninety-nine holy attributes and the Black Stone of Mecca! Go--and go with God, though Eblis is more powerful yonder. There are the unbelievers who say the blessed Koran is a lie, and who seek to turn us aside from the gods our fathers worshipped, and of whom it was written on that Night of Power, when the word came down from Heaven, they shall taste the fires of hell, which like molten metal will devour their entrails!'

His dark eyes flashed as he spoke, and he ground his set teeth in the fury of his fanaticism.

'Allah Shookr!' he exclaimed, and, without waiting for a single word of thanks from Colville, wheeled his horse sharply round, and galloped away towards the distant city at full speed; and a picturesque figure he looked, in his snowy camise and loose mantle, his long, white loonghee floating in the morning breeze, his juzail slung across his back, and the head of his tall, tasselled lance gleaming in the sunshine.

Colville devoutly hoped they would never meet again; yet he had not seen quite the last of Mahmoud Shah.

He now rode joyfully on towards the two parties of British cavalry which were then in sight, and who were--though he knew it not--about to inaugurate those operations which brought on the battle of Charasiah--or 'The Four Water Mills,' a spot about twelve British miles from Cabul.

The troops of Roberts had encamped there for the night, after passing through the picturesque defile called the Sung-i-Navishta. All the vicinity had been scoured by our cavalry patrols, and, little aware that they were on the eve of a bloody engagement, the soldiers, weary with a long day's march, had turned in early.

Daybreak on this eventful day saw two cavalry patrols pushing along the roads that lead from Charasiah to Cabul. Captain Neville, of the 14th Bengal Lancers, with twenty men of that corps, took that one which, after crossing the Chardeh Valley, enters the south-western suburbs of the city, while the southern road, leading through the Sung-i-Navishta, was taken by Captain Apperley, with twenty of the 9th Lancers, and Robert Wodrow, as he had so recently trod the ways there on foot, now rode with him as a guide.

At nine a.m., a puff of smoke came suddenly from the loopholed-wall of a village, and Wodrow's horse fell under him, killed by a musket ball. Apperley reported that he had occupied another village, and was now hard pressed by the enemy, on which a field-officer and twenty more Lancers came on to his succour, while some native infantry went at the double in the direction of Captain Neville's party.

Robert Wodrow was in the act of getting his carbine unstrapped from his dead horse when a mounted man suddenly came upon him clad in a sorely frayed and tattered blue patrol jacket, and wearing on his head a scarlet Afghan loonghee, and great was his astonishment and noisy and genuine his joy on discovering that this solitary and unarmed rider was Leslie Colville, whom he had long since numbered with the slain among the ashes of the Residency.

They shook hands again and again warmly. Each had a hundred questions to ask the other, but both had little information to give, as Colville had been mewed up in Mahmoud's fort since the day of the massacre, and no tidings from home in any way or of any kind had reached Robert Wodrow.

'And now, without a moment's delay, I must report myself at headquarters,' said Colville.

'The General and staff are as yet some miles in the rear, sir,' replied Wodrow, recalled by the remark to their relative positions, 'and I shall guide you. By the carbine and musketry fire in front our two cavalry patrols seem, to be catching it, and I must somehow get another horse. We have plenty of time. The infantry have yet some miles to come!'

Wodrow seemed now alternately in very sad or in the wildest spirits. With Colville's presence, his voice and kindly face, the young fellow's thoughts and memories went keenly and vividly back to the past time at Birkwoodbrae, to the manse of Kirktoun-Mailler, and all the old associations of Ellinor Wellwood and his home.

Then, indeed, he forgot for a time that he was only a corporal of Hussars, as Colville did that he was an officer of the Guards, and they chummed like old friends together.

'Share with me the contents of my haversack and flask, Captain Colville,' said Robert Wodrow, as they sat for a few minutes by the banks of a wayside runnel. 'We are going into action again--that is pretty evident. "Few, few shall part where many meet"--you know what the poet says; and I care little if it be my chance to fall--after all--after all I have undergone.'

'Don't say so, Wodrow,' said Colville, in a tone of reprehension. 'Why the deuce are you so low in spirit now?'

'I should not be, now that I have met you again, Captain Colville,' replied Wodrow, as he received back his flask and took a long pull at it; 'but I feel--I feel--I don't know how to-day. It is not fear, but as if something was about to happen to me; and a song--a song that she--Ellinor--used to sing seems to haunt my memory now.'

'What song? "The Birks of Invermay"?'

'No--another, and at this moment her very voice seems in my ears,' he said, in broken accent.

'And this song of Ellinor's----'

'Ran thus,' said Wodrow, and, with a low voice and a certain humidity in his eyes, he actually sang a now forgotten song--

'Thy way along life's bright path lies,
Where flowers spring up before thee,
And faithful hearts and loving eyes
Assemble to adore thee.
The great and wise bend at thy shrine,
The fair and young pursue thee,
Fame's chaplets round thy temples twine,
And pleasure smiles to woo thee.

'Yet, 'mid each blessing time can bring,
Thy breast is still repining;
'Tis cold as Ammon's icy spring,
O'er which no sun is shining;
And friendship's presence has no charm--
And beauty's smiles are blighted,
Nor joy, nor fame the heart can warm,
That early love has slighted.'

'And _blighted_ has mine been, as you know, Captain Colville,' he added, more sadly than bitterly.

'Come, Wodrow, don't pose as a "blighted being," any way,' said the other, who saw with pain the emotion of his comrade, and feared it sprang from one not unfrequently met with on service, the presentiment of coming death. 'Here comes a Hussar on the spur from the front.'

'Toby Chace!' exclaimed Wodrow, as that individual came powdering along the road, but reined up sharply for a moment or so. 'Whither so fast?'

'I am sent back to report that the enemy in great force are advancing from the direction of the city, and occupying the defile and range of hills between this and Cabul, completely barring our advance. The Ghilzies are all mustering, and the road to Zahidabad, where the fifth division has encamped, is threatened.'

'That is the road by which General Macpherson is advancing with a great convoy of stores and ammunition.'

'Yes--so no doubt we shall have to carry the heights before evening.'

Toby Chace now recognised that Colville was an officer, though in somewhat dilapidated garments, and saluted him, colouring deeply, almost painfully, as he did so.

'My comrade, Toby Chace, Captain Colville,' said Wodrow; 'he is like myself, a reduced gentleman, and will die, I hope, a baronet.'

'I am not in a hurry about that,' said Toby, and, as Colville bowed to him, he saluted again, and proffered his brandy-flask, a silver hunting one, on which a coat of arms was engraved--a relic of better days at Melton and elsewhere. 'I have only a ration biscuit to offer you, sir,' said Toby, laughing; 'but once into Cabul, we shall have luxuries galore--_cotelettes de mouton à l'Ameer_--mutton chops and green chillis. And now to deliver my report!' he added, and, putting spurs to his horse, rode off in the direction of Kushi, while Colville and Robert Wodrow followed him as fast as they could. There was no time to be lost now, as the events of the day were rapidly developing themselves.

Colville reported himself to General Baker (whose brigade was coming on), and joined that officer's staff, on procuring arms, while Wodrow bade him farewell, and joined the squadron of Lancers to which he was attached.

Captain Apperley's command of the latter he had now dismounted, and posted in a shallow ditch that surrounded a square mud fort, in which he placed the chargers. A range of steep hills rose in front of this improvised post, and through them lay the Sung-i-Navishta Pass--which means the 'Place of the Written Stone,' from an ancient Persian inscription carved on a mass of rock in the centre of the defile, stating that the road then had been made in the reign of Shah Jehan, who was crowned at Agra in 1628.

Hills, steep, barren, and stony, were on the left of this post, and there were grey garden walls, from which the Afghans were firing briskly, but as most of their balls went into the air, it was evident that they were ignorant of how to sight the rifles they were handling.

A small party of the 12th Bengal Cavalry dismounted, held a walled garden on the right of this post, and kept up a rattling carbine fire on the enemy, who took cover among ground so rough and broken that no cavalry in the saddle could act against them.

To succour these advanced parties, whose posts were now enveloped in whirls of eddying smoke, streaked by incessant jets or flashes of fire, the Royal Artillery guns came on under Major Parry, with a wing of the Gordon Highlanders under Major Stewart White, with some of the 23rd Pioneers and two squadrons of the 5th Punjaub Cavalry, all sent by General Baker, who assigned to this mixed but slender force the severe task of carrying these garrisoned heights.

Old Spatterdash as he went to the front had just time to wring Colville's hand and congratulate him, but in doing so reeled a little in his saddle. In fact, at that early hour he was still groggy from his potations over night, and said, in a feathery voice,

'S'cuse me, Colville, but that infernal bullet I got at Lucknow is troubling me as usual.'

A few minutes more saw Spatterdash lying on his back, shot through the head, and a riderless horse galloping rearward with loose reins, while very heavy firing on the left announced that Baker was pushing on towards the hills, and all along their green slopes could be seen the white smoke of cannon and rifles eddying and rolling before the soft morning breeze.

As Major White pushed on with his somewhat mixed command, Colville could see the rocky heights on both flanks of the Sung-i-Navishta Pass manned by dark masses of the enemy, all ranked under numerous standards that streamed in the breeze, red, blue, green, white, and yellow, the colours of the different mountain tribes, or of the fortified villages from which they came.

There, too, were the sombre battalions of the Ameer's revolted infantry, clad in brown tunics faced with scarlet; and, most conspicuous of all, were a horde of Ghazis, furious and inflamed fanatics, in purest white, led by several chiefs, but most notably by Mahmoud Shah.

Parry's battery now opened fire on the crowds that covered the nearest hill, and, while yells of defiance mingled with the din of the guns and musketry, four Afghan rifled mountain guns in the Pass replied, making very good practice against us indeed, and waking the echoes of the rocks that overhang the Logur river.

'Let the guns continue to advance, and pound the nearest hill where these fellows with the standards are,' said Major White, adding proudly and confidently, 'With my Highlanders alone I shall sweep the enemy from those hills on our right.'

Parry then advanced his guns to within fifteen hundred yards, and again opened fire. His cavalry escort was commanded by Major Mitford, who says, 'We had thus leisure to watch the advance of the 92nd, which was a splendid sight. The dark green kilts went up the steep rocky hillside at a fine rate, though one would occasionally drop, and roll several feet down the slope, showing that the rattling fire kept up by the enemy was not all display. Both sides took advantage of every atom of cover, but still the gallant kilts pressed on and up, and it was altogether as pretty a piece of light infantry drill as could be seen.'

Meanwhile Parry's guns were sending shell after shell with beautiful precision to the crest of the hill he was ordered 'to pound.' They exploded with dreadful effect whenever and wherever the enemy could be seen preparing to charge. The Ghazis and Ghilzies lay over each other in heaps, torn, mangled, and disembowelled, and the white robes of the former were seen to be splashed and stained with blood; but still the living yelled and brandished their swords and standards, and by four p.m., Parry's guns had completely silenced the four that had been thundering in the echoing pass.

And now it was that the gallant commander of 'the Gay Gordons,' who were still advancing, won his Victoria Cross, as he stormed the crowded hills in person. 'Advancing with two companies of his regiment,' says the _London Gazette_, 'he came upon a body of the enemy, strongly posted, and outnumbering his force by eighteen to one. His men being much exhausted, and immediate action necessary, Major White took a rifle, and going on by himself, shot the leader of the enemy.'

The fall of this personage, who was deemed invulnerable, so intimidated the enemy that they fled down the mountain side, while the Highlanders crowned its crest with a ringing cheer, and then, plunging with their bayonets into the dark defile of the Sung-i-Navishta, they captured the four mountain guns, the horses of which lay disembowelled, dead, or dying in the limber traces. So swift was the rush of the Gordon Highlanders that they had only nine casualties at this point.

With the Albany Highlanders in the van, General Baker pushed along the road towards Chardeh, the 5th Ghoorkas, 5th Punjaubees, and 23rd Pioneers following them, till the whole were opposed on strong and precipitous ground by four thousand Afghans ranged under six large and brightly-coloured standards.

Upward and onward went our troops under a withering rifle fire, the echoes of which reverberated a hundredfold among the hills, as they were tossed back from peak to peak. For two hours the fight went on, our troops loading and firing with great coolness and deliberation; and then was seen the fearful triumph of the breechloading weapon of precision when properly sighted, for each successive row of swarthy men, as they crowned the ridges of rock, was mown down by a deadly fire, as wheat goes prone to the earth before the scythe of the mower, till after a time it seemed that scarcely a man stood up alive after the delivery of these thundering tempests of lead.

The deadly Gatling guns (the pepper castors, as the soldiers named them) proved of little use, owing to the acute angle of elevation; but at last the heights were taken in rear by a flank movement of the Gordon Highlanders, who, with colours flying and all their pipes playing, came storming up the steep slopes, and, crowning the summits, swept the enemy away, or all that remained of them.

By four o'clock the Afghans were everywhere in full flight to Cabul, with the loss of many colours, twenty pieces of cannon, and a host of killed and wounded.

Strong pickets were posted for the night, as the Ghilzies and Mahmoud Shah's Ghazis were hovering about. The troops bivouacked, as the tents and baggage were all packed for the advance to Cabul on the morrow.

During all the events of this most exciting day, by the difference of their rank and duties, Colville had, of course, seen nothing of Robert Wodrow, and feared that his presentiment had been fulfilled, till he heard from one of the staff what the general had recorded in the last paragraph of his despatch--a paragraph that excited utter bewilderment, and joy too, in the hearts of some that were far away, and had heard nothing of the absent one since the terrible catastrophe in the Cabul river:--

'Corporal Robert Wodrow, of the 10th Hussars (doing duty with the squadron of H.M. 9th Lancers), having carried a message for me, on the spur, through a most disastrous fire, after two aides-de-camp and an orderly officer had fallen wounded successively in attempting this perilous duty, I have the honour to recommend him for a commission in the infantry, and also for the Victoria Cross.'

After they had read this, his old parents, as they looked from the manse windows of Kirktoun-Mailler, knew why their kindly parish folk lit that huge bonfire which they then saw blazing on the summit of Craigmhor.

With hearts that were very full the kindly old couple stood hand clasped in hand, as when he had first won her girlish love among the 'siller' Birks of Invermay, and, though they were very silent now, their souls were filled with prayer and prayerful thoughts.