Chapter VI: The Fort of Mahmoud Shah

Resolutely had Leslie Colville defended the summit of the somewhat isolated tower on which he had taken post with only four chosen marksmen, intending to enfilade the front attack on the Residency, and pick off the best shots in possession of the lofty arsenal roof; but he had soon the mortification to see each of his men perish in quick succession, and to find the tower in flames beneath him, cutting off his descent, and leaving him helplessly exposed to a fire from those who must soon have smitten him down but for the frantic fury with which they impeded each other's aim and operations; and while thus perilously situated he heard friendly voices--or such he thought them to be--calling to him from below in Hindustani.

He looked down, and on a gun-platform about twenty feet from where he stood were four natives, Hindostanees, as appeared by their costume--the turban, with a couple of scarfs each, one wrapped round the body, and the other over the shoulders, leaving the rest of the body uncovered--holding outstretched a strong horse-rug or blanket, into which they invited him to drop himself, and trust to them and to their united strength for breaking his fall.

'Chullo, sahib--golee chulte!' (come along, sir--the balls are flying) cried one.

'Chullo, bhai--chullo, pultania sahib!' (Come on, brother--come, battalion officer) cried the other three, also in a kind of Hindustani; so Colville never doubted but that they were Hindoos--perhaps camp-followers--and Hindoos they certainly were.

He paused for a moment, irresolute whether to trust to them or--what? Meet death amid the flames which had cut off his retreat, and all chance of rejoining his struggling companions--the flames that were fast ascending in the tower from storey to storey, and would soon be bursting through the flat roof on which he stood, for already the smoke was rising like a black column through the trap-door by which he had reached it.

He failed to see the fierce expression of mockery and derision which was in the dark faces of the four men below, and, deeming it wiser to risk and trust them than to perish amid the flames, he dropped into the rug, in which they received him with shrill yells of triumph, for the plunder of his person, combined with his murder, were their objects.

But Colville was too quick for them. In leaping over he had relinquished the rifle he had been using for his sword, and with the latter, after baffling an attempt they made to muffle or bundle him up in the rug, while they were staggering beneath his weight, he waved them back just as they rushed upon him with their sharp charahs, and such blind hate and fury that they all wounded each other.

He then put his back against the wall, and kept them at bay with his sword-blade and levelled revolver, which, although they knew not, was unfortunately empty.

Streaming with blood from the wounds they had inflicted on each other, they strove to close in upon him, and speedily several budmashes with sword and shield, and other villains variously armed, came upon the scene, and their cries were loud and fierce.

'Astafferullah! put his head in a bhoosa bag, or one stuffed with chillies!'

'No, let it be in a bag of red pepper, and then let him die the death of the doomed!'

That he would have been bayoneted or shot and cut to pieces there and then was beyond a doubt, had not a horseman furiously intervened by dashing his steed between him and the rabble, who recoiled in recognition of his presence and authority as a sirdir, and he presented his right hand to Colville, exclaiming,

'I ate of your bread and salt on that night when you saved me from the Wahabi dogs in Jellalabad, and when I swore by the Koran and by the Five Keys of Knowledge never to forget your kindness--nor do I now!'

As he spoke Colville, even in that supreme moment of excitement and most deadly peril, recognised again Mahmoud Shah, the mock Hadji, with the Israeliteish features, the complexion fairer than most Afghans, and the livid sword-mark that traversed his right cheek.

The fanatic, for such he was, had for Colville gratitude, and when that exists there is always good-will.

Mechanically the latter grasped the hand held out to him, while the scowling mob, with gleaming eyes and weapons, dark and scowling visages, drew back.

'So--sirdir--you and the Hadji Mahmoud are the same?' exclaimed Colville.

'One and the same--I am that eater of dirt!' he added, to show his humility.

He ordered Colville to give up his arms, and, sending him under a strong escort of his own people out of the city, once more addressed himself to the congenial task of pressing the attack upon the Residency--a task which he continued to the bitter end.

Meanwhile Colville was conveyed, a prisoner, to one of the many forts which stud the plain of Cabul and the heights of Beymaroo that overhang it.

Mahmoud had suddenly become his protector in fulfilment of the old precept of being true to his salt; and Colville, who in his heart was intensely thankful to Heaven for the succour afforded to him, while so many poor fellows were perishing without mercy, felt confident that while with Mahmoud, or under his care, he was tolerably safe; for it is well known that after eating the bread and salt of another, or even salt alone, one, according to Oriental ideas, comes under peculiar obligations of protection and friendship.

As an illustration of this, Lane tells us, in one of his valuable notes to the 'Arabian Tales,' of a daring robber, who, one night, excavated a passage into the palace of the Governor of Sijistan, where he made up a great bale of gold and jewels; he was in the act of carrying it off, when, in the dark, his foot happened to strike against something hard on the floor. Believing it to be a jewel of some kind--perhaps a great diamond--he picked it up, and on applying his tongue to it, found that it was nothing else but a lump of rock salt.

Bitter was his disappointment, 'for having once tasted the salt of the ocean, his aversion gave way to his respect for the laws of hospitality; and throwing down his precious booty, he left it behind him, and withdrew empty-handed to his habitation.'

But Colville remembered, as old Colonel Spatterdash had told him scores of times, how Asiatics can quibble in this very matter; and that in the great Mutiny how often the Sepoys swore 'to be true to their salt,' and not to murder their officers, but stood placidly and approvingly by while the Pandies of other regiments slaughtered them.

In this fashion Mahmoud Shah might be true to _his_ salt. Who can say or fathom the cruel duplicity of the Oriental mind and nature?

And, with these painful surmises and doubts in his mind, Colville heard the roar of the conflict in and around the doomed Residency dying away in the distance as the gates of the fort by the Cabul river were closed behind him.

As he entered, he looked back to the fatal Bala Hissar. The smoke of the conflict, mingled with that of the conflagration, was eddying about its picturesque towers and embattled masses on the mountain slope, all bathed in ruddy splendour by the setting sun. What was being enacted there now? he thought. Was all over now? Had the last of the brave fallen?

After sunset Mahmoud Shah arrived at the fort, which was his own patrimonial stronghold, and assured Colville that all was ended--the last man was slain, and the valour of the Cabulees had been successful.

'Success shows the hand of God, and of Mahomet the Prophet, blessed be their names!' he added.

His arrival at the fort was the signal for a species of ovation among his followers, who mustered some hundreds, all villainous but picturesque tatterdemalions, whose arms were as varied as the fashion and colours of their costume. Many had girdles of leather, from which hung bags for bullets, slugs, and flints, powder-horns and cases for cartridges. Others had cummerbunds, in which were stuck pistols, daggers, charahs, and British bayonets in such numbers that it would have been puzzling to find room for one weapon more.

In addition to all this paraphernalia, every man had a tulwar, and a juzail, or flint or match-lock rifle, in his hand.

Colville was compelled to dissemble his hatred and horror of those who had so wantonly slaughtered his brave companions, many of whose bright, joyous, and handsome English faces came so painfully to memory at that time, all lying cold and gashed and bloody among the ruins of the Residency; and that horror was blended with a great disgust of his host and protector, when he recalled the tragedy his treachery was supposed to have brought to pass with the squadron of the 10th Hussars; that he was a spy who had imposed upon himself at Jellalabad, and had led the Ameer's rebel tribes against us on more than one occasion; but with all this, policy, and his own personal safety, and hope of ultimate freedom compelled him to dissemble.

'Are you thirsty, sahib?' was the first question Mahmoud asked him on quitting his saddle.

'Yes; dying with it! Who could be otherwise after the horrors and exertion of the past day?' exclaimed Colville.

'Drink, then--the commands of the Prophet are nothing to you,' said Mahmoud, as he gave him a large cup filled with Cabul wine (which has a flavour not unlike full-bodied Madeira), and with it a bunch of the grapes of Ghuznee, which are greatly superior to those that grow in the plain of Cabul; and Colville, half-sinking with exhaustion caused by bodily fatigue and fierce over-excitement, thought he had never had refreshment more grateful and acceptable.

Built of mud and sun-dried bricks, the fort of Mahmoud was strong and spacious; it was square, with a squat, round tower at each angle and a keep in the centre, well loopholed for musketry, armed with jingals, and those huge swivel blunderbusses named zumbooracks, which, as firearms, are often as perilous to those who work them as to those at whom they are levelled.

The fort had two gates, in its eastern and western faces; these were protected by demi-bastions, and there was a moat, once filled by the Cabul, but now dry, neglected, and overgrown by vines and orange-trees.

The courtyard was spacious. In the keep was _Dewan-i-Am_, or audience-chamber, surrounded by a divan or continuous seat; beyond it was the _Dewan-i-Kas_, or principal private apartment, and in the towers were lodged the servants of the establishment; apart from all was a zenana, or women's apartments, and elsewhere, in every corner, were stowed away the garrison, composed of the _budmashes_ and other tatterdemalions just described.

When not in the courtyard or on the summit of the keep--always closely watched--Colville was generally in the _Dewan-i-Kas_, where he shared the meals of the Mahmoud. Here carpets were laid on the floor, and there was a kind of chair or stool of state, with cushions for arms, and before it lay the tulwar, shield, and pistols of the sirdir, as in a place of honour.

The fort stood--and no doubt still stands--close to a bend of the clear and otherwise shallow Cabul, a river which is formed by the junction of the Ghorbund and Panjshir, and after dividing into three branches it reunites and flows into the Indus, three miles above the great fortress of Attock.

And Colville, in his prison in the fort--for a prison to all intents and purposes it was--lay for many a weary hour on a charpoy, or native bed, listening to the murmur of the stream as it flowed over its pebbled bed towards the mountain passes that led to India, and marvelled what was in store for him; how long his captivity would last; whether Mahmoud wanted a ransom or held him as a kind of hostage: for that the destruction of the embassy would be amply avenged none could doubt. Then how would it fare with the crafty Ameer?

'He is the son of an animal!' said Mahmoud, on one occasion, scornfully; 'he plays fast and loose with your people and his own. According to an old fable, every man bears on his back a wallet in which are deposited his weaknesses and his vices, which, though concealed from his own eyes, are open to the inspection of those of others. Thus we see that the Ameer, if not the tool of Britain, will be the slave of the Russ.'

'Through his duplicity I am a prisoner.'

'Better that than lying yonder in the Bala Hissar,' said Mahmoud, with a cruel leer in his glittering black eyes.

'I am most unfortunate!'

'It was to be, and so it is.'

The doctrine of fatalism meets and covers everything with the Mussulmans, who can thus throw on the Deity the results of their own negligence.

'If it is God's will that a man should die, let him die,' said Mahmoud, sententiously. 'If it be His will that he should live, let him live.'

Colville thought this was uncommonly like the creed of the 'Peculiar People,' in the city of London.

Though somewhat bored by the prayers and piety of Mahmoud Shah, and greatly disgusted by his ferocity, Colville had not much otherwise to complain of during his detention in the fort; and preferred those times when he was left to himself, when the sirdir secluded himself in his zenana, or was absent at the many weighty and evidently important conferences which were being daily held in the palace of Yakoub Khan. 'It is not good that man should be alone,' we are told; so, as Mahmoud the pious had at least four wives in his zenana, he spent much of his precious time there.

The food which he shared with his host was excellent--it could not be said at table, as it was spread on the floor; but, as knives, forks, and spoons are things unknown as yet under the shadow of the Hindoo Kush, it was rather repellant to our fastidious Guardsman to see Mahmoud rend asunder with his fingers a boiled chicken or daintily roasted hill _chuckore_ (or Greek partridge), to hand him a piece with his brown-hued digits, which ever and anon he put half-way down his throat.

'Eat, sahib,' he would say; 'remember the proverb--touch the stomach and you injure the vitals, but cherish it and you gain heart.'

'But my heart sinks when I think of the friends I have lost through vile treachery.'

'It was the will of God your people should perish in the Bala Hissar,' replied Mahmoud, quietly, as he filled his mouth with a handful of boiled rice and green chillies. 'What says the Koran? "When God willeth evil on a people there shall be none to avert it, neither shall they have any protector beside Him. It is He who causeth the lightning to appear unto you, to strike fear, to raise hope, and who formeth the pregnant clouds." Praise God for His bounty; eat and have no heavy thoughts. The Prophet has written every man's fatal hour upon his forehead. It is done at his birth. Yours had not come, on that day in the Bala Hissar.'

Then Colville would think how strange and striking were his surroundings, and from the bearded face of the sirdir who squatted on a carpet opposite to him his eyes would wander round the _Dewan-i-Kas_ where they were eating the evening meal.

A piece of raw cotton floating in oil that was held in an old ladle wedged into the bare stone wall cast its fitful and lurid glare on the dark faces, the gleaming eyes, the quaint costumes, and oriental weapons of the sirdir's men, who marvelled that he fed and housed an unbeliever, instead of cutting his throat and tossing his carcase to the jackals of the Beymaroo hills; an unbeliever, who shaved his chin and not his head; but Allah! how strange were the customs for the _Feringhee-logue_!

'And fortunate it was for you,' Mahmoud resumed after a time, when his chibouque was brought him, 'that your hour had not come; but come it will, and how will it fare with you then? The paradise which is promised to the pious is not for you,' he continued, plunging at once, as usual with the Afghans, into the Koran; 'therein are rivers of incorruptible water and of milk, the taste whereof changeth not; rivers of wine, pleasant unto those who drink; and of clarified honey; and therein shall be fruit of a thousand kinds, and a pardon from the Lord. Shall the man for whom all these are prepared by the Lord of the Daybreak, be as he who must dwell for ever in the fires of hell, and will have boiling water given him to drink, which shall burst his bowels?'

And ever and anon Colville was treated to quotations much to the same purpose.

Seeing him one day gazing at a photo of Mary Wellwood, the sirdir became at once full of curiosity.

'One of your wives?' he asked.

'No; but one who is to be my wife, I hope.'

'She cannot be of rank--she has no ring in her nose. Is she moon-faced?' (_i.e._, handsome.)

'Very; as you see.'

'And you love her very much?'

'I do indeed.'

'Better than your best horse, your camels, and all your fat-tailed sheep?'

'Better than all the world.'

'Inshallah; perhaps you may see her soon again.'

'Please God, I shall.'

'Do you keep her locked up--in care of your father, or who--as you are absent, and gone to the wars?'

'Why should I do so?'

'Many of our people, if of rank, lock up their wives when they travel.'

'Why?'

'They may be false and artful.'

'And what do you do then?'

He only smiled grimly, and touched the carved silver hilt of the charah in his crimson shawl girdle.

'You treat them with a spirit of selfishness,' said Colville; 'but I know that even Christian men do the same, by making more severe laws for women than themselves, forgetting that by so doing they raise them above themselves.'

But the sirdir knew not what to make of this idea, and so remained silent.

Nearly three weeks had passed since Colville became a prisoner in the fort of Mahmoud Shah, and no tidings had reached him of what was doing in the world of India, beyond the Kyber and other passes, or of what was transpiring in the city of Cabul.

He knew that tidings of the massacre then must have been flashed home by the electric telegraph long since, and that poor Mary would now be mourning for him, as one who was no more!