No words or entreaties of hers were necessary to urge either Waller or Shakespere on this exciting path; and instant action became all the more imperative when Shireen announced that he had sure tidings from Taj Mohammed Khan, and also from Nouradeen Lal, the farmer, who had been purchasing horses on the frontier, that all the lawless Hazarees were in arms to cut off the entire convoy; and that if a junction were once effected between them and the Toorkomans of Zoolficar Khan, all hope of rescue would be at an end.
The permission of the general was, of course, at once asked and accorded, and it was arranged, that, immediately upon their departure, a body of cavalry and light infantry should follow with all speed to second and support them.
Kind-hearted Bob Waller waited only to attend the obsequies of his young comrade (while the Kuzzilbashes were preparing); and over these we shall hasten, though of all the Cabul army he was, perhaps, the only one interred with the honours of war; the battle-smoke had been the pall, the wolf and the raven the sextons, of all the rest!
The spot chosen was a little way outside the Kuzzilbashes' fort, on the sunny and green grassy slope of a hill, where a grove of wild cherry-trees rendered the place pleasant to the eye. From her window Rose could alike see and hear the rapid ceremony; for by the stern pressure of circumstances it was both brief and rapid. No prayer was said; no service performed; no solemn dropping of dust upon dust; no requiem was there, but the drums as they beat the "Point of War," after the last notes of the Dead March had died away.
The quick, formal commands of the officer came distinctly to her overstrained ear, as the hurriedly constructed coffin of unblackened deal, covered by the colour of the 44th Regiment, was being lowered, as she knew, for ever, into its narrow bed; the steel ramrods rang in the distance like silver bells, and flashed in the sunshine; then a volley rang sharply in the air, finding a terrible echo in her heart, while the thin blue smoke eddied upward in the sunshine; another and another succeeded, and Rose—the widowed in spirit—as she crouched on her knees, knew then that all was over, and the smoke of the last farewell volley would be curling amid the damp mould that was now to cover her lost one.
Anon the drums beat merrily as the firing party, after closing their ranks, wheeled off by sections, with bayonets fixed, and Denzil Devereaux was left alone in his solitary and unmarked grave, just as the sun set in all his evening beauty; and a double gloom sank over the soul of Rose Trecarrel.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE HOSTAGES.
Swiftly rode Shakespere, Waller, and their six hundred Kuzzilbashes on their errand of mercy, and midnight saw them far from the mountains that look down on Cabul. Of all his five thousand horse, old Shireen had certainly chosen the flower. All these men rode their own chargers, and all were armed with lance and sword, matchlock and pistols; all had their persons bristling with the usual number of daggers, knives, powder-flasks, and bullet-bags, in which the Afghan warrior delights to invest himself; and all wore the peculiar cap from which they take their name—a low squat busby, of black lambs'-wool, not unlike those now worn by our Hussars, and having, like them, a bag of scarlet cloth hanging from the crown thereof.
To avoid all suspicion or attention en route, Waller and Shakespere had cast their uniforms aside, and rode at their head à la Kussilbashe, dressed in poshteen and chogah, and armed with lance and sabre.