With something of despair gathering in his heart, Waller set forth in company with the grazier and others whom the latter employed as syces, and who were all well armed.
To dissemble he felt was his best plan, and he affected such perfect cheerfulness, made himself so useful in tending, watering, and grooming the camels and ponies, that he quickly won the entire goodwill and confidence of Jubar Khan, so much so that, after journeying for three days towards the hills of Hindoo Kush, on a valuable camel falling quite lame, he actually left Waller in care of it, at a species of camp formed by some Afghan shepherds and their families, whose tents of coarse black camlet were pitched in a sheltered spot by the bank of a beautiful stream.
Jubar Khan passed on his way, desiring Waller, in whose skill he trusted much, to rejoin him with the camel on a certain day at a khan or caravanserai among the mountains,—one of those one-storied, quadrangular edifices, full of bare rooms, built by the wayside for the accommodation of travellers, and the erection of which is considered one of the most meritorious acts that a Hindoo or Mussulman can perform.
Waller gladly saw the dark figures of Jubar Khan, his people and property, vanish into a pass of the mountains, where they seemed to go right into the setting sun, which shed through it a blaze of crimson light; and then he set himself zealously to tend the ailing camel, in the hope that when well he should depart therewith on a journey of his own. In three days the camel was quite restored; but on the morning of the fourth, when Waller went as usual to groom it, the animal was gone!
It had been stolen in the night, by whom, all pretended ignorance; and Waller, who immediately affected great anxiety to rejoin his master the grazier, was told that he must remain where he was, "as a hostage for the missing camel, and that as so excellent a groom could not be an indifferent shepherd, he would be useful in tending the sheep."
A crook was put in his hand, a brass lotah for drinking, a few chupatties for food were given him, and he was set to watch a flock of dhoombas, or those Persian sheep that have tails nearly a foot broad, are almost entirely composed of fat, and form the most valuable stock of those nomadic dwellers in tents among whom he now found himself. By the poor agriculturists he was however treated with great kindness.
Farther than ever from Jellalabad now, without money, arms, or a horse, his clothes in rags, his boots almost worn away, Bob Waller sat like one in a stupor by the side of a rivulet that trickled through the pasture where the sheep were grazing; and as he looked from the green mountains to the black tents that dotted their slope, he asked of himself, whether his present existence or his past was the dream.
"So here have fate and the fortune of war cast me! a Turk, a ploughman, a groom, a shepherd," he sighed; "by Jove! what the deuce shall I be next? The ancient sceptics doubted the reality of everything—and I begin to think they were right."
All was still, save when a stork or crow alighted on the granite rocks that overhung the mountain rivulet, or a fleet antelope shot like a spirit across the valley; and so would pass the weary day, Bob Waller not watching the sheep, but the mountain shadows, changing from the eastward to the westward, while he sighed for a glass of Madeira and a biscuit, a glass of pale ale and a "quiet weed," and thought of the old time of tiffin in the jolly mess-bungalow, and the faces of those he should never see there again.
At night, crouching on a piece of xummal (or coarse blanket) and covered with sheepskins, Waller would dream at times of Mabel's bright face and merry laugh; but more often, perhaps, of those terrible seven days and seven nights of the retreat through the snowy passes, where the living trod sullenly, doggedly, on over the dead, till they too fell, to be trod on in turn. Horrid phantoms haunted him. Had he outlived, out-trodden all? Alas, it almost seemed so. Shots would seem to ring in his drowsy ear, and he fancied it was the Afghan juzailchees again; anon he would think himself at home in pleasant Cornwall; that he was after the brown pheasants within sight of the sounding sea, or among the quails on wild and rugged Lundy Isle; and then he would start to wakefulness and lie for hours, revolving in his mind the means, the chances of reaching Jellalabad; but, alas! so much time had elapsed, that he might only reach it to find that the garrison had abandoned it to save the hostages from death, or that the city was besieged by the victorious Afghans!