Idu roared with laughter. He said he had seen my pop-guns firing and he was afraid that, unless our bluff could do the trick, I should be unpleasantly surprised at the strength of the walls of Khwash.
The next morning our entire force of two mountain guns, two machine guns, seventeen cavalrymen, nine trained and sixty-five untrained infantry and a handful of Chagai Levies, moved forward to the assault of the Raiders' stronghold. By eleven o'clock, and while we were still about three miles distant, we came into full view of the fort. Even from that distance I could see that Idu's boast as to its strength was no idle one, and that if Mahommed-Hassan elected to put up a fight we could not possibly expect to be able to take it by assault.
Our anxieties were now further increased by rumours that Halil Khan, with all his Gamshadzais, was on the way to reinforce Jiand, of whose personal surrender he had not yet heard.
Our objective, Khwash, lay on a plateau about six miles wide, bordered on either side by two ranges of hills. These hills have an altitude of some six thousand feet and run parallel to each other on the North-East and South-West sides of the fort. The fort itself is somewhere about four thousand five hundred feet above sea-level. This plateau was at one time well populated, well wooded and cultivated with some seventy-three karezes running along it, all tapping the great underground stream which flows from the Southern slopes of the Koh-i-taftan.
We were hot and played out after our sixteen-mile march, so halted to rest, and to speculate as to whether Mahommed-Hassan would surrender on, or before, the time-limit given him.
We had not long to wait, however, for hardly had we halted when we saw a messenger, on foot and carrying a white flag, coming towards us.
He salaamed as he reached us and said he bore a message from Mahommed-Hassan, imploring me not to blow Khwash into the skies, as he had heard all about the defeat of the Yarmahommedzais under Jiand, and that, under the circumstances, he recognised the folly of attempting to oppose my advance. Moreover, he was now on his way to surrender himself and the fort.
So bluff still held the day!
And sure enough, a few minutes later, Mahommed-Hassan, a miserable-looking creature, arrived and tendered his formal surrender.