Saleh Mohammed, though a Khan, having once been a Soubadar in Captain Hopkins's Afghan Levy (from which he had deserted to the party of Ackbar Khan, at the beginning of the troubles), had some ideas of military order and show: thus he had at the head of the caravan—for it resembled nothing else—six Hindostanees, furnished with some of our drums and bugles gleaned up in the Khyber Pass, and with these they made the most horrible noises for several miles at the commencement and close of each day's march; but even this medley of discordant sounds failed to extract the faintest smile from the hostages—even from Major Pottinger and the few soldiers—so sunk were they in heart and spirit now.
In the Maidan valley they rode between fields of golden grain bordered by towering poplars and pale willows. Bare, bleak-looking mountains undulated in the distance, and the poor ladies eyed them wistfully.
Were these the borders of dreaded Toorkistan?
They proved, however, to be only a portion of the Indian Caucasus, the extremity of which, the Koh-i-baba, a snow-clad peak, rises to the height of sixteen thousand feet above the level of the Indian Sea.
That night Saleh Mohammed chose a pleasant halting-place for them, influenced by some sudden emotion of pity. There they were supplied with plums, wild cherries, peaches, and the white apricot which has the flavour of rose water. But ere morning there was an alarm; a confused discharge of musketry was fired in every direction at random, all round the bivouac; one or two bullets whistled through it. A dhooley-wallah was shot dead, and several red arrows, barbed and bearded, stuck quivering in the turf; yells were heard, and then a furious galloping of horses passing swiftly away in the distance.
It was a chupao—a night attack planned by some of the Hazarees, a wild and independent Tartar tribe, whose thatched huts lie sunk and unseen on the hill slopes, and on whose confines they had halted. They are all good archers, and, though armed with the matchlock, usually prefer the bow.
They are bitter foes of the Afghans, and had hoped, by making a dash, to cut off some of their prisoners; but Saleh Mohammed was too wary for them, and on that evening had doubled his guards ere the sun went down.
The 2nd of September found the train traversing the Kaloo Mountain, one in height only inferior to the Koh-i-baba. From thence, over a vast chaos of wild and terrific hilly peaks that spread beneath them like the pointed waves of a petrified sea, they could view, at last, and afar off, the plains of Toorkistan—the land of their future bondage; and anew the wail of grief and woe rose from them at the sight.
The following day, that the absurd might not be wanting amid their misery, to the surprise of all, Saleh Mohammed appeared mounted on his camel, not in his usual amplitude of turban, with his flowing chogah and Cashmere shawls, but with his lean, shrunken, and bony figure buttoned up in a tight regimental blue surtout, with gold shoulder-scales, and crimson sash, frog-belt, and sword, all of which had whilom belonged to Jack Polwhele, of the Cornish Light Infantry, a tiny forage cap (which Jack used to wear very much over his right ear) being perched on the back of his bald head, while the chin-strap came uncomfortably only below the tip of his high hooked nose; and thus arrayed he prepared to meet and, as he hoped, duly to impress Zoolficar Khan, the governor of the town of Bameean, where the first halt was to be made for further and final orders from Ackbar, as to whether the hostages should be sold or slain; for now their custodian began to have some strange doubts upon the subject, and now his victims were fairly out of Afghanistan and in the land of the Tartars, nine days of monotonous and arduous journey distant from Cabul.
We have lately seen the kind of mercy meted out to helpless hostages by Communal savages in the boasted city of Paris—the self-styled centre of civilization—and so may fairly tremble for the fate of those who were in the hands of Asiatic fanatics on the western slopes of the Hindoo-Kush.