'If I fall to-day or any other day, thank God I have made all square for my dear girl and her sister, too.'
This referred to a secret visit paid by him to Lincoln's Inn 'anent' codicils to his will the day before he left London; and now he recalled with astonishment the time when he either disliked these unknown cousins or forgot that they existed.
Though Mohammed, Khan of Lalpura and chief of the Mohmunds, had made complete submission apparently to Sir Louis Cavagnari at Dakka, in the preceding year, it did not prevent his people from opposing us now in arms, like many other mountain tribes.
After the hoofs of the cavalry and wheels of the artillery had made the planks of the trestle-bridge resound, silence again fell on the column; and when the moon came out in its oriental splendour, amid some weird, windy, and fast-flying clouds, there was light enough to see the column distinctly.
The sheeny bayonets of the infantry and the spearheads of the lancers (denuded pro temp. of their fluttering banneroles) glittered brightly, as did the sword-blades of all the officers; and our cavalry are generally so gaily appointed that, when the 10th Hussars went cantering to the front, the flashes of light reflected from their accoutrements, if they added to the picturesque, also added to the peril of the occasion, if any scouting Mohmunds were about, as this alone would have revealed the advance of the force, which from its sombre costume would have been, otherwise, almost invisible—but the tropical white helmets were always prominent objects amid the gloom.
At this time, all our troops in Afghanistan wore Cashmere putties, or leg-bandages, made of strips of woollen cloth, two yards and a half long, with a tape stitched on at the end. They were worn round the calf of the leg from the ankle to the knee, where the tape secured them. For cavalry and infantry alike they were a useful and warm addition to the clothing in cold weather; and there was but one objection—the time necessary for binding them on.
Some natives acted as guides, and in the cold moonlight the cavalry and artillery went clattering over rough stones, and more than one of the former fell from his horse, and of the latter off the limber-seats, as some sudden and deceitful ditch or water channel had to be crossed. The enemy was in front; no one knew precisely when or where he might be fallen on, and this added to the zest and excitement of the time and occasion.
The orders of the cavalry were to spur on in front; to get in between the Mohmunds and the hills, for the purpose of cutting off their retreat; and a picturesque sight were the Hussars and Lancers, as they dashed through the Kunar River (which joins the Cabul about five miles from Jellalabad), in its descent from Shigar, and flashes of light came from their glancing accoutrements as they vanished away from the sight of the infantry in the gloom ahead, when a cloud passed over the face of the moon.
Next came the infantry splashing through the Kunar, which rose to the men's waist-belts, and was broad at the point where it was crossed; and a bath such as it gave was not a desirable beginning in a cold morning with the work they had in hand.
At one place the route lay over what seemed to have been an old Mohammedan burial-ground. Coffins are not used in the East, the body being simply rolled up in a sheet, and placed in the grave with only a foot or two of earth spread over it. Into these receptacles the wheels of the guns stuck fast in succession, compelling the gunners to quit the limber-seats and drag them out, crushing and grinding the human bones beneath, and causing an expression of much rough language unfitted for ears polite. If the superstition of the Afghans, who greatly venerate burial places, which they call 'Cities of the Silent,' be true, that the ghosts of the dead sit at the head of their own graves, invisible to mortal eyes, enjoying the odours of the flowers planted there, the said ghosts must have been somewhat scared by the row Her Majesty's gunners made till they got their seven-pounders free from this succession of traps, and once more on solid ground; and also by old Spatterdash, who was impatient to get his Sepoys forward, and swore in English and Hindostanee.