"Dear Bob," cried Polwhele to Waller, as he lay choking in blood, "if you cannot carry me out of the field, take my sword and this ring for my—my poor mother."
But Waller could do neither, for over Polwhele's body there thickly fell a heap of killed and wounded.
After his ammunition was expended, Sergeant Treherne, whom rage and desperation inspired with a fury resembling madness, laid wildly about him, and with the heel of his musket dashed out the brains of more than one tall Afghan. This stalwart son of the Mines had come of a race that in their time had been greater men than miners in Cornwall—Huelwers, who were rulers then in the land before, perhaps, a stone of Windsor or Westminster had been laid; and now he stood like a hero on that fatal knoll of Gundamuck, beating down the foe with the butt-end of his clubbed weapon, till he fell, riddled with bullets, upon the corpses of his comrades.
Seeing all lost, Waller, his heart swollen almost to bursting, had now to seek his own safety. Concealed by the smoke and some wild pistachio trees, he found shelter in a cavern, though fearing that traces of his footsteps in the snow might lead to his discovery, and there he lay on the cold rocky floor, more dead than alive with excess of emotion and all he had undergone, panting, feeble, and well nigh breathless.
He had only his sword now, and even if he escaped the Afghans, wolves, bears, or hyænas—the mountains teemed with all of them—might come upon him in the night.
Being well mounted, Audley Trevelyan and two medical officers effected their escape, but were closely pursued by Amen Oollah Khan, and compelled to separate. One was overtaken and slain within four miles of Jellalabad. Audley's horse was shot under him, and he concealed himself till nightfall in a nullah or ravine.*
* At Gundamuck "the enemy rushed in with drawn knives, and with the exception of two officers and four men, the whole of this doomed band fell victims to the sanguinary mob."—Memorials of Afghanistan, Calcutta, 1843.
Long prior to this event, Colonel Dennie, of the 13th, made a curiously prophetic speech. "His words were, 'you'll see that not a soul will escape from Cabul except one man, and he will come to tell us that the rest are destroyed."—Sale's Brigade.
Ackbar Khan is said to have uttered a similar prediction.
The despatches record that of all the sixteen thousand five hundred who marched from the Cantonments of Cabul, ninety miles distant, Dr. Brydone, a Scottish medical officer of the Shah's service, bleeding, faint, covered with wounds, and carrying a broken sword in his hand, alone reached the city of Sir Robert Sale's garrison; but Trevelyan came in four hours after, to confirm his terrible tidings of the total destruction of our army and all its followers, for all who were not slain were made slaves by the captors.