General Nott, however, held out in Candahar, and, on receiving some supplies and reinforcements; he was ready to co-operate with Sale and Pollock in a joint advance upon Cabul, to rescue the hostages at all hazards, or, if too late for that, to avenge their fate and the fate of our slaughtered army by a terrible retribution.
A severe defeat sustained by Ackbar Khan, when Sale, on the 7th of August, made a resolute sortie and cut his army to pieces, taking two standards, four of our guns lost at Cabul, all his stores and tents, relieved Jellalabad of his presence; and in this state were matters while Waller and Audley Trevelyan were serving there, doing any duty on which they might be ordered, foraging, trenching, and skirmishing, for they were unattached to any regiment; and the former was still ignorant as to the fate of his fiancée, the bright-faced and auburn-haired Mabel Trecarrel, and equally so as to that of her sister and his friend Denzil. He had long since reckoned the two latter as with the dead, and mourned for them as such; for he knew nothing of their being retained as special "loot" by Shereen Khan, who now kept himself aloof from Ackbar, of whom he had conceived a truly Oriental jealousy and mistrust.
Though so near them, Waller knew no more concerning the number, treatment, or the safety of the hostages held for the evacuation of the city he had assisted to defend, than those to whom Downie Trevelyan was applying in London—perhaps less.
To the original number of captives were now added thirty more, from the following circumstance, which in some of its details is curiously illustrative of the cunning and avaricious nature of the Afghan mountaineers. A pretended friendly cossid, or messenger, arrived at Jellalabad, bearer of a letter from Captain Souter, of Her Majesty's 44th Regiment, dated from a village near the hill of Gundamuck, detailing the last stand made there by the few unhappy survivors of Elphinstone's army, and adding that he and Major Griffiths, of the 37th Regiment, were the prisoners of a chief who, on a sufficient ransom being paid—a thousand rupees for each—would send them to Jellalabad with their heads on their shoulders. The brave fellows of the 13th Light Infantry instantly subscribed a thousand rupees at the drum-head; a thousand more were collected with difficulty by their now-impoverished officers; and then came a proposal to ransom twenty-eight privates of the 13th and 44th Regiments, who were in the hands of the same chief, for a lac of rupees. By incredible efforts, and by encroachment on the military chest, this sum was sent with certain messengers, who, by a previously concerted scheme, were waylaid and robbed of it by men sent by Ackbar Khan, who, seizing the thirty Europeans, added them to the other hostages whose lives or liberties were to pay for the surrender of Jellalabad!
The poor soldiers had given all they possessed in the world, save their kits and ammunition, to save their comrades from perilous bondage, and had given it in vain. They had but the consolation of having done for the best.
Amid even the exciting bustle of military duty, the reflections of Waller were sometimes intolerable. He could never for a moment forget. Though he was not, as a matter-of-fact young English officer, prone to flights of romantic fancy, imagination would force upon him with poignant horror all that Mabel might be forced to endure at the hands of those on whose mercy she and her companions were cast by a fate that none could have foreseen, especially during the pleasant days of the year that was passed at Cabul, when the race-course, the band-stand, picnics, hunting-parties, morning drives, and rides to see Sinclair's boat upon the lake, tiffin parties at noon, others for whist or music in the evening, made up the round of European social life there, ere Mohammed Ackbar Khan came to the surface again with his deep-laid plots for aggrandisement and revenge.
Mabel Trecarrel, his affianced wife, so gently soft and lady-like—her image was ever before him, her voice ever in his ear, and the varying expressions of her clear grey eyes, with all her winning ways, came keenly and vividly to memory, more especially in the lonely watches of the night, when muffled in his poshteen, with only a Chinsurrah cheroot to soothe his nerves and keep him warm, he trod from post to post visiting his sentinels, or listened for the sounds that might precede an Afghan assault, or perhaps an earthquake; for the troops had both to encounter, though often nothing came but the melancholy howl of the jackal on the night wind, as it sighed over the vast plain around the city of Jellalabad—the Zarang of the historians of Alexander.
He had frequent thoughts of returning to Cabul in disguise as an Afghan. He had already been pretty successful in his Protean attempts to conceal his identity; but Sir Robert Sale would by no means accord him permission to risk his life again in a manner so perilous; so, as partial inactivity was maddening to him, after Ackbar Khan's defeat had left all the avenues from the city open, he volunteered, if furnished with a suitable escort, to ride to Candahar, and urge on General Nott the policy of instantly advancing. Sir Robert Sale agreed to this, and furnished him with a despatch and a guard of twenty Native Cavalry; so Bob Waller departed, actually in high spirits, thankful that even in this small way he was doing something that might ultimately lead to the recapture of Cabul, and, more than all, the rescue of her he loved.
At a quick pace he crossed the arid desert that surrounds the city, and ascended into the well-wooded and magnificent mountain ranges that rise all around it, but more especially to the westward, whither his route lay, and his spirits rose as his party spurred onward. "What pleasure there is in a gallop!" says Paul Ferroll; "the object is before one, at which to arrive quickly; the still air becomes a wind marking the swiftness of one's pace—the fleet horse is his own master, yet one's slave; the bodily employment leaves care, thought, and time behind. One feels the pleasure of danger, because there might be danger, and yet there may be none."
So thought Waller, as he careered at the head of his party, with a cigar between his teeth, the which to keep alight while riding at full speed, he had previously dipped in saltpetre, a camp-fashion peculiar to India.