Upon receipt of this news Landon and I looked at each other and then roared with laughter. We began to realise that the Battle of Koh-i-taftan had indeed been a decisive victory!
That same evening Halil Khan, and about fifty of his chosen men, arrived, and, formally salaaming, surrendered themselves. I was immensely impressed by the appearance of this Raider Chief. He was not very tall, but was magnificently proportioned and developed, with an intelligent, handsome head, and a peculiarly alert look. He certainly looked what he was well known to be, namely, one of the best fighting leaders in the Sarhad.
He and all his men were armed with Mauser rifles and an abundance of ammunition. Halil Khan seemed wedded to his, and when he was informed that the General Sahib was going to extend to him the same terms as to Jiand and allow him to keep his rifle, his joy was very apparent.
These German rifles had either been provided by the Germans, and sent direct across Persia, or were the outcome of the gun-running in the Persian Gulf prior to the War.
The price of a Mauser in the Sarhad, at that time, was about one thousand one hundred rupees, though I was glad to learn that the British Lee-Enfield was valued at one thousand two hundred rupees. The real cost of manufacturing these rifles is, I believe, from six to ten pounds or sixty to one hundred rupees, so that it will be seen what sort of a price the Raiders are prepared to pay for their arms.
Halil Khan was particularly anxious to learn how we had managed to defeat Jiand, and was of course curious to know where the vast British forces were. But he gathered no more information than Jiand had done.
My own private opinion is that Halil Khan was disgusted with Jiand for surrendering, and that he himself would have dearly loved a fight, for—as I was afterwards to learn to my cost—he was not only a magnificent fighter, but did not know the meaning of fear.
The only way in which I can account for his own surrender—for only a day or so previously he had been fully prepared to fight us—is that he had just become aware of the fact that Jiand was a prisoner in our hands. He was afraid, therefore, that if he attacked us the proud old Chief might suffer, and that, on the whole, it would be wiser to appear submissive—for the moment.
But Idu warned me at the time, and again and again in the immediate future, "Jiand and Halil Khan will never rest until they have fought you again. Unless you can get a much larger force, at the very first opportunity, and almost certainly when they learn that you have at present practically no troops, they will turn and attack you. Place no reliance on their word or their oath, even though it be given on the Koran."
That same evening I learnt of a great raid that had recently been made into Persia by a section of the Yarmahommedzais, under a leader called Izzat. As an outcome of this raid hundreds of Persian ladies and children had been dragged from their homes and brought by Izzat into the Sarhad, there to be bartered as slaves. Their sufferings, both from the indignity and shame of their present state, and the hardships they must inevitably have undergone amongst their nomad captors, after the comparative luxury of their own homes, can well be imagined.