On the following day they were carried to Seh-Baba; and the same dreadful scenes of carnage sickened them as they went along. On the march another prisoner, and a welcome one, was added to the party—one whom the sick and wounded had much wanted—a medical officer, Dr. Macgrath. On the 13th, partly over remote mountain paths, so precipitous that the camels could scarcely keep their footing, and partly along the bloody track of our slaughtered army, the captive band were escorted to Jugdulluck. Here three ragged tents had been pitched for their reception. Here they found General Elphinstone, Brigadier Shelton, and Captain Johnson, who had been claimed as hostages by Akbar Khan; and here they learnt that all the soldiers and camp-followers who had left Caubul, with the exception of this little handful of prisoners, had, in all probability, been annihilated on the march.
Next morning they resumed their journey—the General, the Brigadier, and Captain Johnson, accompanied by Akbar Khan, bringing up the rear. A more rugged and difficult road had seldom been travelled over. The ascents and descents were seemingly impracticable; it made the travellers giddy to look at them. The road was “one continuation of rocks and stones, over which the camels with the greatest difficulty scrambled” with their burdens.[180] At night they bivouacked on the banks of the Punshuhur river. There were no tents, no shelter of any kind for the ladies. So they rolled themselves up in their warmest garments, laid their heads upon their saddles, and composed themselves, as best they could, to sleep.
Early in the morning of the 15th of January, they crossed the deep and rapid fords of the Punshuhur river. The passage was not accomplished without difficulty and danger; but the active kindness of the Afghan Sirdars availed to escort the party over in safety.[181] A bitterly cold wind was blowing as they passed; and a few followers and cattle were lost. Proceeding then in a north-easterly direction, they made their way over a barren, inhospitable country, where neither grass nor water was to be seen, into the fertile valley of Lughman; and halted in the vicinity of the Tugree fort. The following day was the Sabbath. A day’s halt had been determined upon; and it fell, by a happy accident, on the Christian’s day of rest. A Bible and Prayer-book had been “picked up on the field at Boot-Khak;” and the service of the Church of England was read to the little band of prisoners. It is easy to imagine with what deep emotion they must have joined in the prayer beseeching the Almighty to have mercy “upon all prisoners and captives.”
On the morning of the 17th, they were again upon the move.[182] Tugree is only thirty miles distant from Jellalabad; and up to this time a faint hope had been encouraged by the captives that they were to be escorted to that place. But now an order came for them “to prepare for a march higher up the valley,” and in a different direction. It was now found that their destination was the fort of Budeeabad. This was to be their resting-place. It had been recently erected; and was the property of Mahomed Shah Khan, the father-in-law of the Sirdar. Five rooms, composing two sides of an inner square, or citadel, were allotted to the British prisoners. The buildings were “intended for the chief and his favourite wife,”[183] and it may therefore be presumed that they afforded the best accommodation in the place. The party consisted of nine ladies, twenty gentlemen, and fourteen children. Seventeen European soldiers, two European women, and a child, were located in another part of the fort.
On that night of the 17th of January, Pottinger and Akbar Khan were in close and earnest conversation. The Sirdar entered on the subject of his father’s release; and asked the English officer if he would guarantee an interchange of prisoners and the evacuation of Jellalabad. Pottinger could only answer that he was a prisoner and powerless; and could give no promises with any certainty of their being performed. But he undertook to write to Macgregor on the subject; and to urge him to lay the wishes of the Sirdar before the Supreme Government.[184] It appeared to Pottinger that no more expedient course could be adopted than that involving a general interchange of prisoners and the restoration of the country to Dost Mahomed Khan.
Ostensibly for the purpose of proceeding southward for the reduction of Jellalabad, Akbar Khan took his departure on the following day; and the captives began to settle down into the monotony of prison-life. In this place they continued to reside for nearly three months. The incidents of captivity, during this period, were not many, or very memorable. Here for the first time, after the lapse of a fortnight, they were able to change their clothes.[185] Clean linen was very scarce; and the nice sensibilities of delicate English ladies were outraged by the appearance of nauseous vermin. The food that was served out to them was not of the most luxurious description. It consisted of rice, mutton, and thick cakes of unleavened dough, prepared by the Afghan cooks in a manner little relished by English palates.[186] Captain Lawrence acted as the steward of the captive party, and divided the supplies, whether they were the daily food of the prisoners, or parcels of clothes, money,[187] and other equally acceptable presents sent them either by their Afghan captors or their friends at Jellalabad.
There was nothing very painful in the outward circumstances of their captivity, except the unmitigated dirt, which the cleanly habits of the English in India must have rendered peculiarly offensive. They were not suffered to wander far from their prison-house; but within its walls they found both occupation and amusement, and the time passed at Budeeabad is not now, in the retrospect, the saddest of their lives. They had among them a few books; some had been brought for sale by natives of the country, who had picked them up on the road traversed by the army on its retreat; others had been forwarded by friends at Jellalabad. Now and then a stray newspaper came in from that place. It is hard to say how greedily its contents were devoured, and how eagerly they were discussed. Sometimes letters were received from below; there was a good deal of cypher correspondence between the prisoners and Sale’s garrison,[188] and many long letters were written to friends in India or in England, to be despatched when opportunity might offer. Then there were amongst them two or three packs of old playing cards—dirty and limp, but not the less serviceable for these conventional defects. Some rude backgammon and draft boards had been constructed for prison service; and there was quite enough elasticity of spirits left among the captives to render them not disinclined for more active and boisterous sports. They played at “hop-scotch;” they played at “blind-man’s buff.” A favourite game among them was the latter; and when some ten or fifteen healthy and cheerful little boys and girls joined in the sport, the mirth ran fast and furious. A Christmas party in old England seldom sees madder gambols than these—seldom has the heart’s laughter risen more freely from a band of merrier children than those who romped with their elders in prison at Budeeabad. But from those elders were seldom absent the memory of the harrowing past, painful apprehensions regarding the future, and, above all, a depressing sense of the national humiliation.
The Sabbaths were always kept holy. Every Sunday saw the little party of Christian prisoners assembled for the worship of their God. Sometimes in the open air, sometimes in tents, in huts, or any other place available for the purpose, Sunday after Sunday, the Church Service was read to as devout a band of worshippers as ever assembled to render thanks to the Almighty, and to implore the continuance of His mercies. Nor were these observances lost upon their guards. Wild and savage as were their keepers, they seemed to respect the Christians’ day of rest. There was more decorum in their demeanour, more courtesy in their manner, than on the working-days of the week. An atmosphere of peace and rest seemed to envelop them on that sacred day. Some, who had saved little else, had saved their Bibles, and every evening little knots of captives might have been heard in their cells, lifting up the voice of prayer, and reading to one another God’s blessed promises to the heavy-laden and the afflicted.
On the 23rd of January, Akbar Khan, accompanied by Sooltan Jan, returned to Budeeabad. The object of his visit was to induce Pottinger to write to Macgregor at Jellalabad, stating the terms on which the Sirdar was willing to treat with the British for the release of the prisoners. The letter was duly written;[189] but Pottinger repeated that he had no hope of the surrender of Jellalabad; and added that he advised the Sirdar not to attack it lest a war should be commenced of which it was difficult to see the end. Pottinger believed that the Sirdar was sincere in his expressions of a desire to establish friendly relations with the British. “But,” he added, “he has been brought up in the midst of treachery, and does not know how to trust; and I regret that our own conduct in this country has put our government’s faith on a par with themselves. Our defeat, though sufficiently galling to a soldier, really loses its sting when the taunts of our broken promises, which we know to be true, are thrown in our teeth by men who know the truth only by name.”[190]
About the middle of the month of February the captive party was increased by the arrival of Major Griffiths and Captain Souter; and a few days afterwards, the same terrific earthquake which had shaken down the ramparts of Jellalabad made the walls of their prison-house reel and totter, and levelled a portion of the fort with the dust. For many days lesser shocks of earthquake kept the people in a continued state of alarm. The prisoners slept in the open court-yard, which was filled with their beds; and all kinds of rude awnings were thrown up to secure a little privacy. The cold was intense, and the heavy dews saturated the bedding like rain. No lives were sacrificed within the fort by this great convulsion of nature; but narrow was the escape of Lady Sale, Brigadier Shelton, Captain Mackenzie, Mr. Eyre, and General Elphinstone. The first four were on the house-top when the shock commenced; and had scarcely time to secure a footing on a safer spot when the roof fell in with a crash. The poor old General was bed-ridden. His sufferings had been every day increasing. He had been wounded on the retreat. His constitutional infirmities had been aggravated both by the external hardships to which he had been subjected, and the corroding anxieties which had preyed upon his mind. It was plain to all that his end was approaching. But he bore his accumulated sufferings with heroic fortitude; and the warmest sympathies of his fellow-captives were with him. Unable to bestir himself, when the walls of the fort were shaken by the earthquake, he was for a little time in imminent peril; but a soldier of the 44th, named Moore, who had acted as the General’s personal attendant, rushed into the room and carried off the attenuated old man in his arms. “The poor General,” says Eyre, who records this incident, “was greatly beloved by the soldiery, of whom there were few who would not have acted in a similar manner to save his life.”