After a brief halt for a meal, Terrington sent on the Dogras to convoy the wounded to Rashát, the Bakót levies following at midnight with the transport. He would rely only on his tried fighters for the long rearguard action which would begin on the morrow, and only end beyond the Paldri.
But though the struggle of the next few days would mean hardship for all and death to many, the worst was over with that day's ordeal, on which had hung the safety of the entire force. Had Terrington been beaten, every man with him would have been massacred, Rashát would have fallen within a month, and his name held up to the scorn of the years to come as of one who had lacked the courage to stand to his post. Yet his victory had been, under Heaven, but an accident. He knew that well enough. That fight, the most sanguine for its size in Indian history, which has coloured the name as it dyed the water of Rashát river, would have been lost but for the arrival at its crisis of men on whose coming he had no right to count. It was won indeed, won in its overwhelming effectiveness by his subtlety, his daring tactics, his personal valour, but it would have been lost despite all those, despite any devices that men could have contrived, had not a certain company of the Guides possessed the splendid training and the undauntable energy of the men whom Afzul Singh had led.
Yet now he had, thanks to them, the redounding credit of it, who, but for them, would have borne its enduring shame.
Determined to hold the Gul on the morrow as long as possible, Terrington halted the Guides on the further side of it, and ordered them to turn in as soon as they had made a meal, while the Sikhs prepared defences and furnished pickets for the night. The Guides, save for their three miles' scurry, had been under fire all the way from Sar, and had not left a man behind them. Keen soldiers all of them, they forgot their own part in the day's success, and, when Terrington went down to inspect their camp, gathered from their cooking-pots and cheered him tempestuously.
Terrington laid his hand affectionately on Afzul's shoulder.
"You did it," he said gratefully; "you did it!"
The circle about his own camp fire was completed by Walcot and Freddy Gale, and it was there that Rose Chantry watched the ways of men who have come out of battle. Walcot, who had fought well and been slightly wounded in the shoulder, seemed unable to talk enough. Speech gurgled out of him like rain from a gargoyle. Freddy Gale listened, throwing in brief descriptive touches, his round merry face convulsed from time to time with infectious laughter. Terrington, who sat beside her, said nothing at all, but the keenness of his eyes was softened by a grave content.
Rose noticed the warmth of his greeting to Gale and his evident gladness to have a man under him on whose knowledge and judgment he could depend. Once, when leaning forward across the fire after dinner to ask Walcot a question, she put her hand unawares on Terrington's, which was lying on the ground. He did not move, and she took it in so tight a grip, that, as she settled herself again, he turned his head and looked smiling into her eyes.
The enemy had been so roughly handled that Mir Khan could not persuade his men on the morrow to a fresh attack across such an obstacle as the Gul, and Terrington after holding it till nightfall fell back upon Rashát.
But before he reached it the Saris were again upon his heels like a pack of famished wolves, ravenous for blood. During the three days' march to the foot of the Palári, the fighting never ceased night or day. In the dark it dwindled to the buzz or the slap of the sniper's bullet, varied by an attempt to rush a picket; doing only occasional damage but keeping the whole camp awake, and causing a suppression of the fires whose warmth was becoming with every hour more essential.