Again Akbar renewed his demand for the women and children, and this time he urged it on grounds of humanity. It now appeared certain that the only chance of saving their lives was to accept Akbar’s proposals. Nine ladies, twenty gentlemen, and fourteen children were accordingly made over to him as prisoners or hostages. It is true that he assured them that they were to consider themselves his honoured guests, and that on the whole he behaved well to them, but their sufferings while in his charge were very considerable. They believed themselves to be in constant danger of death, or else that they would be sold as slaves and sent to Bokhara. All their arms and means of defence were taken from them, and they were but too well acquainted with the treacherous and cruel nature of the man whose prisoners they were.

The most noticeable feature of Lady Sale’s journal is its buoyant courage and cheerfulness. The forty-three persons of whom the hostages consisted were reinforced by the birth of three infants, one of which was Mrs. Sturt’s, and consequently was Lady Sale’s grandchild. They were eight and a half months in captivity. Their accommodation very often consisted of no more than two small rooms among the whole party. Lady Sale speaks of being lodged twenty-one in a room fourteen feet by ten feet; another time thirty-four persons had to share a room only fifteen feet by twelve feet; sixteen persons, of both sexes and all ages, shared one small room for a long time. Lady Sale and her daughter—indeed, most of the captives—had lost everything but the clothes they stood in. Yet, in the midst of all the discomfort and danger to which the party was exposed, there is seldom a word of complaint in Lady Sale’s journal which she wrote at the time, and more often than not their hardships are turned into matter of laughter and merriment. The retreat from Cabul was begun, it will be remembered, on 6th January; on the 9th the ladies and children, with twenty gentlemen, among whom was Major Lawrence, were made over to Akbar Khan; not until 18th January were they established in permanent quarters in the fort of Buddeeabad. The journal for 19th January begins: “We luxuriated in dressing, although we had no clothes but those on our backs; but we enjoyed washing our faces very much, having had but one opportunity of doing so since we left Cabul. It was rather a painful process, as the cold and glare of the sun on the snow had three times peeled my face, from which the skin came off in strips.” Major Lawrence describes the rooms assigned to the ladies as “miserable sheds full of fleas and bugs.” But even these and worse trials to the temper were good-humouredly encountered. “It was above ten days,” Lady Sale wrote, “after our departure from Cabul before I had an opportunity to change my clothes, or even to take them off and put them on again and wash myself; and fortunate were those who did not possess much live stock. It was not till our arrival here (near Cabul, almost at the end of their captivity) that we completely got rid of lice, which we denominated infantry; the fleas, for which Afghanistan is famed, we called light cavalry.” The food served out to the prisoners was the reverse of appetising: greasy skin and bones, boiled in the same pot with rice, and all served together, was a usual dish. Lady Sale describes a kind of bread made of unpollarded flour mixed with water, and dried by being set up on edge near a fire. “Eating these cakes of dough,” she says, “is a capital recipe for heartburn.” The bad cooking they remedied by obtaining leave to cook for themselves.

One of the chief alleviations of their lot consisted—so far, at least, as the ladies were concerned—in needlework; they were supplied with calico, chintz, and other materials, and were most thankful, not only for the clothes which they were thus enabled to make, but also for the occupation the work afforded. The ladies also cheerfully bore their part in other kinds of work, and became laundresses, cooks, and housemaids, and, in one instance, carpenters and masons for the nonce. The choice of rooms being very limited, one was allotted to Lady Sale and her companions which had no windows, and consequently no means of getting air and light, except what came through the door. “We soon set to,” writes Lady Sale, “and by dint of hard working with sticks and stones, in which I bore my part, assisted by Mr. Melville, until both of us got blistered hands, we knocked two small windows out of the wall, and thus obtained ‘darkness visible.’” Lady Sale had permission to correspond with her husband, General Sir Robert Sale, who was conducting vigorous measures against the enemy at Jellalabad. Lady Sale was very proud of her husband, and mentions with evident delight the nickname of “Fighting Bob,” which his soldiers had given him. Any recognition of his deserts gave her keen satisfaction. She refers to the presentation of a sword to him as “the only thing that has given me pleasure,” although at that time her praises were upon everybody’s lips. She was so thoroughly a soldier’s wife that she understood military tactics: before she left Cabul she speaks of taking up a post of observation on the roof of the house, “as usual,” in order to watch the military movements that were going forward. She says she understood the plan of attack as well as she understood the hemming of a handkerchief; therefore she diligently wrote an account of everything of importance to her husband. These letters were so important for the military and political news they contained that they were often forwarded to the Commander-in-chief, to Lord Auckland, the Governor-general, and to the Court of Directors of the East India Company.

The principal danger to which the prisoners were exposed, next to the ferocity and treachery of Akbar Khan’s character, arose from the extraordinary frequency of earthquakes in the region in which they were confined. Lady Sale is one of the very few human beings who has ever made such an entry in a journal as this: “3d and 4th March. Earthquakes as usual.” Under other dates such expressions as “Earthquakes in plenty” are frequent; and hardly less significant is the entry, under the date of 19th April, “No earthquakes to-day.” The earthquakes were of a most formidable character. Lady Sale had a narrow escape of destruction from one which took place in February. She was on the roof of the room she lived in, hanging out some clothes to dry, when the whole building began to rock; she felt the roof was giving way, and rushed down the stairs, just in time to save her life, as the building fell with an awful crash the instant she left it. Lawrence writes: “We all assembled in the centre of the court, as far from the crumbling walls as possible, ... when suddenly the entire structure disappeared as through a trap-door, disclosing to us a yawning chasm. The stoutest hearts among us quailed at the appalling sight, for the world seemed coming to an end.”

Almost the only angry words that appear in Lady Sale’s journal are caused by attempts of the officers to negotiate a ransom for themselves and the rest of the party, without consulting the ladies as to the terms to be agreed upon. Women’s suffrage had not been much talked of in 1842, but Lady Sale appeared to hold that taxation and representation ought to go hand in hand; for she says, “A council of officers was held at the General’s regarding this same ransom business, which they refer to Macgregor. I protest against being implicated in any proceedings in which I have no vote.” In the end the Indian Government paid the sum that it was agreed to give to Saleh Mahomed for effecting the deliverance of the prisoners. Another source of irritation to Lady Sale was the dread lest the military authorities should hesitate to proceed vigorously against the Afghans at the right moment because it might endanger the lives of the hostages. “Now is the time,” she wrote on the 10th May, “to strike the blow, but I much dread dilly-dallying just because a handful of us are in Akbar’s power. What are our lives compared with the honour of our country? Not that I am at all inclined to have my throat cut; on the contrary, I hope I shall live to see the British flag once more triumphant in Afghanistan.”

Allusion has already been made to Lady Sale’s power of extracting grim fun out of the discomforts of the situation. The Afghans are great thieves, and one of the minor troubles of the captives lay in the fact that their captors calmly appropriated articles sent to the prisoners. They took possession of a case in which Lady Sale had left some small bottles. “I hope,” she writes, “the Afghans will try their contents as medicine, and find them efficacious: one bottle contained nitric acid, another a strong solution of lunar caustic.” Twice she was incapacitated by severe attacks of fever, which had proved fatal to several of the party; but her courage never deserted her; and she shook off fever and all other ills when she heard her husband was near. Saleh Mahomed had already agreed, for a sum of money, to remove them from Akbar’s power, and they had left the place in which they had been confined; but Akbar would probably have recaptured them had not Sir R. Sale and Sir R. Shakespear with their brigades joined them just at the nick of time.

Who can tell what the meeting must have been between the gallant husband and wife? The narrative can best be given in Lady Sale’s own words: “Had we not received assistance, our recapture was certain.... It is impossible to express our feelings on Sale’s approach. To my daughter and myself happiness, so long delayed as to be almost unexpected, was actually painful, and accompanied by a choking sensation which could not obtain the relief of tears. When we arrived where the infantry were posted, they cheered all the captives as they passed, them, and the men of the 13th” (her husband’s regiment) “pressed forward to welcome us individually. Most of the men had a little word of hearty congratulation to offer each in his own style on the restoration of his colonel’s wife and daughter; and then my highly-wrought feelings found the desired relief; I could scarcely speak to thank the soldiers for their sympathy, whilst the long-withheld tears now found their course.”

[2]. A crore of rupees is a million. At that time a rupee was worth 2s.; therefore a crore of rupees would equal £100,000.

XIV
ELIZABETH GILBERT

Elizabeth Gilbert, daughter of the Bishop of Chichester, was one of the blind who help the blind. It is true, physically, that the blind cannot lead the blind; but, perhaps, none are so well fitted as the blind, who are gifted with courage, sympathy, and hope, to show the way to careers of happy and active usefulness to those who are suffering from a similar calamity with themselves.