“Awfully pleasant for all you fellows!” ejaculated Geoffrey.
“We had only two casualties, strange to say, though some of the tents were riddled. I need scarcely remark that we were more careful about the site of our next camp.”
“No doubt you made yourselves very secure and luxurious when you were permanently fixed at Dabaule?” inquired Helen.
“Comparatively speaking I suppose we were more secure, although Vaughan caught an Afridi in his tent one night. He heard a noise, and putting out his hand to get hold of a revolver, he caught the bare, shaven head of one of these beggars. He gave the alarm, and some of us rushed in and found him struggling with a powerful fellow, with the fiend’s own expression and a knife between his teeth. We made an example of him next day as a warning to others. But it was of precious little use; they slaughtered our unfortunate grass-cutters and syces in the most barbarous way, and sent us in our regimental barber with both hands cut off. He did not seem to mind that so much as eighty rupees they had robbed him of, and he was utterly heartbroken about them—his savings, his little all. So I promised to make up the money if he got well; and, strange to say, he made a most wonderfully rapid recovery, and seems to get on capitally with his two bare stumps.”
“Poor creature!” exclaimed Helen.
“How horrible!” cried Miss Ferrars.
“I suppose it was all open country?” remarked Geoffrey; “no roads, and like a bleak sort of common, I always fancy it; with a few hills and lots of stones and rocks.”
“That was the case in some places, but in others we had, after awhile, a capital road, especially by the Kyber line, thanks to the sappers; and some wag in one place put up a finger-post with ‘Madras to Cabul’ painted on it in large letters; and the road itself was as good as you need wish to see; but in many parts we had no road at all, and it was terrible work for the artillery, especially when the country was cut up with lots of watercourses.”
“By-the-bye, Rex,” said Helen, helping herself to her second peach, “how were you off for food?”
“Very badly, indeed, sometimes; and I assure you that I now know what hunger means, from downright practical experience.”