Chapter XX: At Cabul

For Robert Wodrow to attempt to make his way alone to where his regiment was now quartered far in the rear, through passes filled by savage tribes, was not to be thought of; thus nothing was left for him but to proceed with the ambassadors' escort to Cabul.

He was safe now, and had escaped from that terrible catastrophe at the Ford of Isaac; but poor Robert was only a corporal, and the public papers barely recorded the circumstance. Now he was once more with Europeans; his whole bearing rapidly changed; his weakness and illness seemed to leave him, his step resumed its buoyancy, his eyes their fire and, if sad, old devil-may-care expression.

Though Robert Wodrow, by enlisting in the hussars, had opened a considerable social gulf between himself and Captain Leslie Colville of the Guards, it was impossible for them both not to have many sympathies in common; thus oblivious of that gulf the two rode frequently together, talking of the Wellwoods and the Birks of Invermay, on the route by Gundamuck, Suffaidh Sang, and Hazardaracht.

On service the bonds of rank and even of discipline, so to say, are often loosened, for the experience of fighting side by side makes the finest qualities of the soldier, forming the true and loving link between the officer and his men. It fires the sense of _esprit-de-corps_, and blots out all the ignobler phases of garrison and barrack life, teaches self-reliance, inspires _cameraderie_ and patriotism, and makes men less coarse in speech and kindlier to each other in spirit, and more grave and earnest with the work in hand.

After halting for the night near Hazardaracht, or the 'Place of the Thousand Trees,' Sir Louis Cavagnari and his party pushed upwards to the famous Shutargardan Pass, which is eleven thousand five hundred feet in height, and from thence the road to Cabul lies through narrow and rock-bound denies.

Immediately below this mighty mountain eminence lie lesser hills that diminish in height as they slope down into a vast plain in the richest state of cultivation, dotted by numberless villages, all of the most picturesque aspect.

At Shutargardan the embassy found themselves in the land of the powerful and most warlike Ghilzie tribe, whose fighting force was estimated at nearly two hundred thousand men; but there they were received with every outward honour by an escort of the Ameer's regular troops, whose equipment caused some surprise and even merriment among the Europeans of the escort.

'By Jove, Colville, here are some countrymen of yours!' cried a staff officer, choking with laughter, as some of the Ameer's 'Highlanders' presented arms.

The Ameer had actually dressed a body of his troops in tartan kilts, in imitation of the Gordon Highlanders, whose costume had greatly impressed him, and these they wore over baggy cotton breeches; while the cavalry who accompanied them wore the same nether garments (minus the kilt) with red tunics, white belts, and helmets of soft grey felt, and in addition to tulwar and pistols, every man rode with a whip, the wooden handle of which, when not required, was stuck into his right boot.

They had smooth-bore carbines slung over the right thigh, muzzle downwards.

'A precious set of dark-looking duffers they are,' was Robert Wodrow's off-hand comment, as he surveyed them.

Escorted by these troops, Sir Louis Cavagnari and his companions continued the remaining forty-five miles of the journey to Cabul, passing Kushi and other fortified villages, and it was not without emotions of interest and anxiety too, that they found themselves on the 24th of June, entering the gates and traversing the streets of that hitherto openly--perhaps yet secretly--hostile capital, which is surrounded by low, barren, and rocky hills, but amid a plain which time and human industry have made wondrously fertile and beautiful.

The dark-visaged and motley crowds in the streets--Afghans, Kuzzilbashes, Persians, Tajiks, and Jews--scowled very unmistakably at the Feringhees, whose presence they did not want, whose prowess in recent wars they feared, and whose race and religion they loathed.

The streets through which the visitors rode were all built of sun-dried bricks and wood, about two storeys high, with flat roofs, and low, square doorways, now and then a larger one, with a mulberry-tree overhanging a mud wall, indicating the residence of a great man.

The city is three miles in circuit, and is dominated by the Bala Hissar, in which the embassy took up their quarters, a place incapable of being defended, though the citadel, in consequence of the ruinous condition of its walls and ramparts. It has, however, a wide ditch, and stabling for a thousand horses.

It is half-a-mile long by a quarter of a mile broad, and presents externally a cluster of lofty, square, embattled towers, with its chief strength, or inner citadel, high up on the slope of a hill.

As they entered its arched gate between two circular towers, Colville heard a voice amid the scowling crowds exclaim, with uplifted hands,

'La Ilah ilia Allah? Why does not He shrivel them all up by a flash of lightning, and cast them into hell for ever?'

The speaker mingled with the multitude, but not before Colville recognised his figure, and remembered Mahmoud Shah, the sham hadji of Jellalabad; but it would have been alike unwise to notice or pursue him at that crisis.

In the Bala Hissar there were assigned by the Ameer apartments for the use of the ambassador and his suite and escort--apartments having marble floors and walls covered with arabesques, old as the days of Tamerlane and Baber perhaps, certainly as old as those of Nadir Shah, and for a time the whole party were to all appearance well received by the Sovereign and his people; but after a little space the former, notwithstanding his hollow protestations and fulsome letter to the Viceroy at Simla, grew cold and haughty, and daily saw less and less of Sir Louis Cavagnari, while the mobs without began to manifest alike turbulence and insolence, and the isolated embassy was doubtless involved in peril.

Roving brigands infested all the roads around the city, yet the months of July and August passed, quietly enough, though some Afghan troops who had marched in from Herat used threatening language against Sir Louis and insulted the soldiers of his escort, on one occasion compelling Colville and two of the guides to draw their swords.

It has been said--but we know not upon what authority--that Cavagnari received distinct information that the lives of himself and all his companions were in imminent peril, but the letters which those gentlemen sent to India, and those which Mary Wellwood received at long intervals from Colville, gave no indications of apprehension.

Yet a stormy cloud was gathering over the picturesque towers of the Bala Hissar.

END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.

LONDON: PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD, BLENHEIM HOUSE.