He remained perfectly passive and, perhaps, indifferent in their hands. His wound had bled profusely, and he was now in that state of extreme prostration which usually succeeds a great loss of blood, when the senses wander, and wild dreams, tangled and incoherent visions, disturb the brain of the sufferer. He felt very heedless of life; but there are times when death seems to avoid those who are so, and who fear him not. In all the misery of his condition he had but one consolation—that Sybil knew nothing of it. As his bearers trod on, he heard them, when occasionally they stumbled against a dead body, burst out into anathemas against the Feringhees, whom they stigmatised as "dogs, devils, sons of Shytan, sons of burnt fathers, and base-born Kaffirs," all of which gave him little hope for his ultimate safety.
The dusk of the January eve was closing in, when, after passing for some miles through a sheltered and well-wooded valley, the sides of which were studded by several castles or bourges, the strongholds of Nawabs and Khans of military tribes, the dhooley-bearers arrived at the arched gateway of the great country residence of the chief of the Kuzzilbashes.
It was, as usual with the Afghans, whose state of society is pretty much what it was among the Scots in the feudal days, a square fort, measuring about a hundred yards each way, with solid wa;ls twenty-five feet in height, and flanked at each corner by a strong half-circular bastion. A fausse-bray and deep ditch surrounded it, the latter being filled by a canal cut from the Cabul river.
The zunah-khaneh, or private dwelling of Shireen and his family, occupied the centre of the great square, and was surrounded by an inner wall or barbican, all loopholed for musketry, while traverses mounted with cannon, guarded the entrances. The devan-kaneh, or hall of audience, through which Denzil was borne, was literally crammed with the plunder gleaned up from the retreating army—bullock trunks filled with wearing apparel, barrack furniture, tents, arm-chests, musical instruments, and utensils of all kinds. It was decorated with much of barbaric splendour, and had its wall on one side composed of carved and gilded wood, wherein were six great panels inscribed with passages from the Koran, amid green and gold arabesques. These opened into apartments beyond, and could be slid up and down at pleasure (like windows in Britain) for the free circulation of air in summer.
Into one of these apartments Denzil was borne, placed on a couch made up chiefly from the bedding that was in the dhooley, and then a hakim came to examine his wound.
Amid all his deep grief, and mortification for past events, he felt himself thankful for a cup of golden coloured mellow Derehnur wine, which the hakim gave to restore his wasted strength; "for it is the law of human nature, that the claims of the living must become a counterpoise to the memory of the dead."
As loss of blood was the chief ailment of Denzil, on his wound being dressed he recovered rapidly, and in three days was able to sit on a kind of divan—for chairs were unknown in that part of the world—at a window, which overlooked a garden and the long wooded valley, at the extreme end of which, and in the dim distance, rose a high, green, conical hill which he recognised, and knew to look down on the plain and city of Cabul. His hakim was experienced enough in the art of dressing bullet holes and sword cuts; but his ideas of physic, beyond a charm written on paper, and washed into a draught, were somewhat perplexing and peculiar; thus he prescribed and proffered various kinds of pills, powders, and potions, from the medicine chests of Doctor Brydone and other medical officers, in the belief that if one thing failed to insure perfect recovery, another might do so.
Denzil knew that he had been spared in the belief that he was a Nawab, and he feared to undeceive his captors as to that circumstance, lest they might kill him after all; while he feared also that if he left them in error, they might detain him for years, or seek to extort some enormous ransom. He knew nothing of the total destruction of the army, or of the existence and retention of other European hostages for the evacuation of Jellalabad. Thus he resolved, as he had no resort but patience, to await the pleasure of Shireen Khan, who was still absent, and hoped that he might find a more powerful, and less avaricious protector in the person of the Shah, of whom our Queen was the friend and ally. Moreover, through his wuzeer Taj Mohammed, some light might yet be thrown upon the fate of the lost Rose Trecarrel.
The Kuzzilbashes, in whose hands he was a prisoner, are a powerful military tribe, who formed exclusively the Royal Guard of Dost Mohammed, and can always, with ease, muster five thousand fighting men. Distinguished by their scarlet caps, they are of Persian descent and form a peculiarly Persian party in Afghanistan, where as being Sheeahs, they remain apart from the other Afghan people (who are bigoted Soonees), and are so exclusive that they have their own quarter of Cabul fortified against all the rest. Hence, though their chief was outwardly, and when it suited his own interest, actually an adherent of Ackbar Khan, he had been secretly and deeply implicated in political intrigues with the late Envoy, whose remains yet hung in the market place.
From the hakim, Denzil learned that one of our officers, named Colonel Palmer,* had been cruelly tortured in the city by having a rope tied round his bare leg, after which it was twisted tight by a tent-peg (like the old French boot), and this made him more than ever anxious to reach the presence of the Shah, who still held the Bala Hissar with a few adherents; the remnant of the Native army we had organised for him under British officers, all of whom, of course, had left him now. From his strange medical attendant he learned also of the old General's surrender, and subsequent death.