"Everything is ready, master. The grain is nearly done, and it won't take me long to pound it up. I got a few sticks down at the stores and the kettle is just boiling."
"Then as soon as it is ready I will stain myself, but I sha'n't put on the Afghan dress until the last thing. Have you cooked some of the flour?"
"Yes, sir, I have made four cakes. They are baking in the ashes now. I thought perhaps you would eat one before we started, and we can carry the others for to-morrow."
"I wish, Azim," Angus said, "that there was some chance of this journey being useful, but I feel convinced that no good can come of it. The moonshee has sent in a report that confirms the rumours we heard. There can be no doubt that General Sale is strongly beleaguered in Jellalabad, and will have all his work to do to hold the place, and therefore it will be absolutely impossible for him to fight his way up the pass."
"Then why should you go, master?"
"Because I have been asked to go as a forlorn hope; and also because, however great the risk I may run, I do not think that it is greater than it would be if I went down with the army. We have no baggage animals. We have food for only three days more, and it will only last that time by cutting down the rations still further. The unfortunate camp followers are for the most part without warm clothing of any sort, and will die by thousands. As to the troops, I have no doubt that most of them will fight when they know that unless they cut their way through they are doomed, but their chance of victory is small. Here in the open plain they might even now, if well led and worked up to enthusiasm by a stirring speech, thrash the Afghans, numerous as these may be; but pent up in the passes, under a fire from every hillside by a foe they cannot reach—for in their present weak state they could never scale the mountains—I believe it will be a massacre rather than a fight. At any rate, if we are to be killed, I would rather be shot as a spy than go through such awful scenes as there will be before a bullet finishes me."
"I don't want to die at all, master; but if it be the will of Allah, so be it. But, as you say, I would rather be killed straight off than struggle on through the snows in the passes and get killed in the end."
As soon as it became dusk, Angus and his follower put on their disguises. A few minutes later Eldred Pottinger came in.
"Well, as far as looks go you will pass anywhere, Campbell, and certainly as regards language there is no fear of your being suspected. The real difficulty will be in explaining where you came from. Every village has sent its contingent of fighting men, and if it happened that you met anyone from the place you pretended to come from, the consequences would be very awkward."
"I intend to give out that I have come down from Arcab, which is a little village to the south of Ghuznee. I went out there once with a detachment to buy some cattle. It is hardly likely that any of the men from that place would have come here, for they would naturally join the bands that are threatening our garrison there. Of course I can invent some story to account for my not doing the same."