crowning the heights above, were to converge from the centre, left,
and right upon what we will call the Afghan army, then stationed
towards the lower extremity of a flat-bottomed valley. Thus it will be
seen that three sides of the valley practically belonged to the
English, while the fourth was strictly Afghan property. In the event
of defeat the Afghans had the rocky hills to fly to, where the fire
from the guerilla tribes in aid would cover their retreat. In the
event of victory these same tribes would rush down and lend their
weight to the rout of the British.
The screw-guns were to shell the head of each Afghan rush that was
made in close formation, and the Cavalry, held in reserve in the right
valley, were to gently stimulate the break-up which would follow on
the combined attack. The Brigadier, sitting upon a rock overlooking
the valley, would watch the battle unrolled at his feet. The Fore and
Aft would debouch from the central gorge, the Gurkhas from the left,
and the Highlanders from the right, for the reason that the left
flank of the enemy seemed as though it required the most hammering. It
was not every day that an Afghan force would take ground in the open,
and the Brigadier was resolved to make the most of it.
'If we only had a few more men,' he said plaintively, 'we could
surround the creatures and crumple 'em up thoroughly. As it is, I'm
afraid we can only cut them up as they run. It's a great pity.'
The Fore and Aft had enjoyed unbroken peace for five days, and were
beginning, in spite of dysentery, to recover their nerve. But they
were not happy, for they did not know the work in hand, and had they
known, would not have known how to do it. Throughout those five days
in which old soldiers might have taught them the craft of the game,
they discussed together their misadventures in the past--how such an
one was alive at dawn and dead ere the dusk, and with what shrieks and
struggles such another had given up his soul under the Afghan knife.
Death was a new and horrible thing to the sons of mechanics who were
used to die decently of zymotic disease; and their careful
conservation in barracks had done nothing to make them look upon it
with less dread.
Very early in the dawn the bugles began to blow, and the Fore and
Aft, filled with a misguided enthusiasm, turned out without waiting
for a cup of coffee and a biscuit; and were rewarded by being kept
under arms in the cold while the other regiments leisurely prepared
for the fray. All the world knows that it is ill taking the breeks off
a Highlander. It is much iller to try to make him stir unless he is
convinced of the necessity for haste.
The Fore and Aft waited, leaning upon their rifles and listening to
the protests of their empty stomachs. The Colonel did his best to
remedy the default of lining as soon as it was borne in upon him that
the affair would not begin at once, and so well did he succeed that
the coffee was just ready when--the men moved off, their Band leading.
Even then there had been a mistake in time, and the Fore and Aft came
out into the valley ten minutes before the proper hour. Their Band
wheeled to the right after reaching the open, and retired behind a
little rocky knoll, still playing while the regiment went past.
It was not a pleasant sight that opened on the uninstructed view, for
the lower end of the valley appeared to be filled by an army in
position--real and actual regiments attired in red coats, and--of this
there was no doubt--firing Martini-Henry bullets which cut up the
ground a hundred yards in front of the leading company. Over that
pock-marked ground the regiment had to pass, and it opened the ball
with a general and profound courtesy to the piping pickets; ducking in
perfect time, as though it had been brazed on a rod. Being
half-capable of thinking for itself, it fired a volley by the simple
process of pitching its rifle into its shoulder and pulling the
trigger. The bullets may have accounted for some of the watchers on
the hillside, but they certainly did not affect the mass of enemy in
front, while the noise of the rifles drowned any orders that might
have been given.
'Good God!' said the Brigadier, sitting on the rock high above all.
'That regiment has spoilt the whole show. Hurry up the others, and let
the screw-guns get off.'
But the screw-guns, in working round the heights, had stumbled upon a
wasp's nest of a small mud fort which they incontinently shelled at
eight hundred yards, to the huge discomfort of the occupants, who were
unaccustomed to weapons of such devilish precision.
The Fore and Aft continued to go forward, but with shortened stride.
Where were the other regiments, and why did these niggers use
Martinis? They took open order instinctively, lying down and firing at
random, rushing a few paces forward and lying down again, according to
the regulations. Once in this formation, each man felt himself
desperately alone, and edged in towards his fellow for comfort's sake.
Then the crack of his neighbour's rifle at his ear led him to fire as
rapidly as he could--again for the sake of the comfort of the noise.
The reward was not long delayed. Five volleys plunged the files in
banked smoke impenetrable to the eye, and the bullets began to take
ground twenty or thirty yards in front of the firers, as the weight of
the bayonet dragged down and to the right arms wearied with holding
the kick of the leaping Martini. The Company Commanders peered
helplessly through the smoke, the more nervous mechanically trying to
fan it away with their helmets.
'High and to the left!' bawled a Captain till he was hoarse. 'No good!
Cease firing, and let it drift away a bit.'
Three and four times the bugles shrieked the order, and when it was
obeyed the Fore and Aft looked that their foe should be lying before
them in mown swaths of men. A light wind drove the smoke to leeward,
and showed the enemy still in position and apparently unaffected. A
quarter of a ton of lead had been buried a furlong in front of them,
as the ragged earth attested.
That was not demoralising to the Afghans, who have not European
nerves. They were waiting for the mad riot to die down, and were
firing quietly into the heart of the smoke. A private of the Fore and
Aft spun up his company shrieking with agony, another was kicking the
earth and gasping, and a third, ripped through the lower intestines by
a jagged bullet, was calling aloud on his comrades to put him out of
his pain. These were the casualties, and they were not soothing to
hear or see. The smoke cleared to a dull haze.
Then the foe began to shout with a great shouting, and a mass--a black
mass--detached itself from the main body, and rolled over the ground
at horrid speed. It was composed of, perhaps, three hundred men, who
would shout and fire and slash if the rush of their fifty comrades who
were determined to die carried home. The fifty were Ghazis,
half-maddened with drugs and wholly mad with religious fanaticism.
When they rushed the British fire ceased, and in the lull the order
was given to close ranks and meet them with the bayonet.
Any one who knew the business could have told the Fore and Aft that
the only way of dealing with a Ghazi rush is by volleys at long
ranges; because a man who means to die, who desires to die, who will
gain heaven by dying, must, in nine cases out of ten, kill a man who
has a lingering prejudice in favour of life. Where they should have
closed and gone forward, the Fore and Aft opened out and skirmished,
and where they should have opened out and fired, they closed and
waited.
A man dragged from his blankets half awake and unfed is never in a
pleasant frame of mind. Nor does his happiness increase when he
watches the whites of the eyes of three hundred six-foot fiends upon
whose beards the foam is lying, upon whose tongues is a roar of wrath,
and in whose hands are yard-long knives.
The Fore and Aft heard the Gurkha bugles bringing that regiment
forward at the double, while the neighing of the Highland pipes came
from the left. They strove to stay where they were, though the
bayonets wavered down the line like the oars of a ragged boat. Then
they felt body to body the amazing physical strength of their foes; a
shriek of pain ended the rush, and the knives fell amid scenes not to
be told. The men clubbed together and smote blindly--as often as not
at their own fellows. Their front crumpled like paper, and the fifty
Ghazis passed on; their backers, now drunk with success, fighting as
madly as they.
Then the rear-ranks were bidden to close up, and the subalterns dashed
into the stew--alone. For the rear-rank had heard the clamour in
front, the yells and the howls of pain, and had seen the dark stale
blood that makes afraid. They were not going to stay. It was the
rushing of the camps over again. Let their officers go to Hell, if
they chose; they would get away from the knives.
'Come on!' shrieked the subalterns, and their men, cursing them, drew
back, each closing into his neighbour and wheeling round.
Charteris and Devlin, subalterns of the last company, faced their
death alone in the belief that their men would follow.
'You've killed me, you cowards,' sobbed Devlin and dropped, cut from
the shoulder-strap to the centre of the chest, and a fresh detachment
of his men retreating, always retreating, trampled him under foot as
they made for the pass whence they had emerged.
I kissed her in the kitchen and I kissed her in the hall.
Child'un, child'un, follow me!
Oh Golly, said the cook, is he gwine to kiss us all?
Halla--Halla--Halla--Hallelujah!
The Gurkhas were pouring through the left gorge and over the heights
at the double to the invitation of their Regimental Quick-step. The
black rocks were crowned with dark green spiders as the bugles gave
tongue jubilantly:--
In the morning! In the morning _by_ the bright light!
When Gabriel blows his trumpet in the morning!
The Gurkha rear-companies tripped and blundered over loose stones. The
front-files halted for a moment to take stock of the valley and to
settle stray boot-laces. Then a happy little sigh of contentment
soughed down the ranks, and it was as though the land smiled, for
behold there below was the enemy, and it was to meet them that the
Gurkhas had doubled so hastily. There was much enemy. There would be
amusement. The little men hitched their _kukris_ well to hand, and
gaped expectantly at their officers as terriers grin ere the stone is
cast for them to fetch. The Gurkhas' ground sloped downward to the
valley, and they enjoyed a fair view of the proceedings. They sat upon
the boulders to watch, for their officers were not going to waste
their wind in assisting to repulse a Ghazi rush more than half a mile
away. Let the white men look to their own front.
'Hi! yi!' said the Subadar-Major, who was sweating profusely. 'Dam
fools yonder, stand close-order! This is no time for close-order, it
is the time for volleys. Ugh!'
Horrified, amused, and indignant, the Gurkhas beheld the retirement of
the Fore and Aft with a running chorus of oaths and commentaries.
'They run! The white men run! Colonel Sahib, may _we_ also do a little
running?' murmured Runbir Thappa, the Senior Jemadar.
But the Colonel would have none of it. 'Let the beggars be cut up a
little,' said he wrathfully. ''Serves 'em right. They'll be prodded
into facing round in a minute.' He looked through his field-glasses,
and caught the glint of an officer's sword.
'Beating 'em with the flat--damned conscripts! How the Ghazis are
walking into them!' said he.
The Fore and Aft, heading back, bore with them their officers. The
narrowness of the pass forced the mob into solid formation, and the
rear-rank delivered some sort of a wavering volley. The Ghazis drew
off, for they did not know what reserves the gorge might hide.
Moreover, it was never wise to chase white men too far. They returned
as wolves return to cover, satisfied with the slaughter that they had
done, and only stopping to slash at the wounded on the ground. A
quarter of a mile had the Fore and Aft retreated, and now, jammed in
the pass, was quivering with pain, shaken and demoralised with fear,
while the officers, maddened beyond control, smote the men with the
hilts and the flats of their swords.
'Get back! Get back, you cowards--you women! Right about face--column
of companies, form--you hounds!' shouted the Colonel, and the
subalterns swore aloud. But the Regiment wanted to go--to go anywhere
out of the range of those merciless knives. It swayed to and fro
irresolutely with shouts and outcries, while from the right the
Gurkhas dropped volley after volley of cripple-stopper Snider bullets
at long range into the mob of the Ghazis returning to their own
troops.
The Fore and Aft Band, though protected from direct fire by the rocky
knoll under which it had sat down, fled at the first rush. Jakin and
Lew would have fled also, but their short legs left them fifty yards
in the rear, and by the time the Band had mixed with the regiment,
they were painfully aware that they would have to close in alone and
unsupported.
'Get back to that rock,' gasped Jakin. 'They won't see us there.'
And they returned to the scattered instruments of the Band; their
hearts nearly bursting their ribs.
'Here's a nice show for _us_,' said Jakin, throwing himself full
length on the ground. 'A bloomin' fine show for British Infantry! Oh,
the devils! They've gone an' left us alone here! Wot'll we do?'
Lew took possession of a cast-off water bottle, which naturally was
full of canteen rum, and drank till he coughed again.
'Drink,' said he shortly.' They'll come back in a minute or two--you
see.'
Jakin drank, but there was no sign of the Regiment's return. They
could hear a dull clamour from the head of the valley of retreat, and
saw the Ghazis slink back, quickening their pace as the Gurkhas fired
at them.
'We're all that's left of the Band, an' we'll be cut up as sure as
death,' said Jakin.
'I'll die game, then,' said Lew thickly, fumbling with his tiny
drummer's sword. The drink was working on his brain as it was on
Jakin's.
''Old on! I know something better than fightin',' said Jakin, 'stung
by the splendour of a sudden thought' due chiefly to rum. 'Tip our
bloomin' cowards yonder the word to come back. The Paythan beggars are
well away. Come on, Lew! We won't get hurt. Take the fife and give me
the drum. The Old Step for all your bloomin' guts are worth! There's a
few of our men coming back now. Stand up, ye drunken little defaulter.
By your right--quick march!'
He slipped the drum-sling over his shoulder, thrust the fife into
Lew's hand, and the two boys marched out of the cover of the rock into
the open, making a hideous hash of the first bars of the 'British
Grenadiers.'
As Jakin had said, a few of the Fore and Aft were coming back sullenly
and shamefacedly under the stimulus of blows and abuse; their red
coats shone at the head of the valley, and behind them were wavering
bayonets. But between this shattered line and the enemy, who with
Afghan suspicion feared that the hasty retreat meant an ambush, and
had not moved therefore, lay half a mile of level ground dotted only
by the wounded.
[Illustration: The tune settled into full swing, and the boys
kept shoulder to shoulder.--P. 69.]
The tune settled into full swing and the boys kept shoulder to
shoulder, Jakin banging the drum as one possessed. The one fife made a
thin and pitiful squeaking, but the tune carried far, even to the
Gurkhas.
'Come on, you dogs!' muttered Jakin to himself. 'Are we to play for
hever?' Lew was staring straight in front of him and marching more
stiffly than ever he had done on parade.
And in bitter mockery of the distant mob, the old tune of the Old Line
shrilled and rattled:--
Some talk of Alexander,
And some of Hercules;
Of Hector and Lysander,
And such great names as these!
There was a far-off clapping of hands from the Gurkhas, and a roar
from the Highlanders in the distance, but never a shot was fired by
British or Afghan. The two little red dots moved forward in the open
parallel to the enemy's front.
But of all the world's great heroes
There's none that can compare,
With a tow-row-row-row-row-row,
To the British Grenadier!
The men of the Fore and Aft were gathering thick at the entrance to
the plain. The Brigadier on the heights far above was speechless with
rage. Still no movement from the enemy. The day stayed to watch the
children.
Jakin halted and beat the long roll of the Assembly, while the fife
squealed despairingly.
'Right about face! Hold up, Lew, you're drunk,' said Jakin. They
wheeled and marched back:--
Those heroes of antiquity
Ne'er saw a cannon-ball,
Nor knew the force o' powder,
'Here they come!' said Jakin. 'Go on, Lew':--
To scare their foes withal!
The Fore and Aft were pouring out of the valley. What officers had
said to men in that time of shame and humiliation will never be known;
for neither officers nor men speak of it now.
'They are coming anew!' shouted a priest among the Afghans. 'Do not
kill the boys! Take them alive and they shall be of our faith.'
But the first volley had been fired, and Lew dropped on his face.
Jakin stood for a minute, spun round and collapsed, as the Fore and
Aft came forward, the curses of their officers in their ears, and in
their hearts the shame of open shame.
Half the men had seen the drummers die, and they made no sign. They
did not even shout. They doubled out straight across the plain in open
order, and they did not fire.
'This,' said the Colonel of Gurkhas softly, 'is the real attack, as it
should have been delivered. Come on, my children.'
'Ulu-lu-lu-lu!' squealed the Gurkhas, and came down with a joyful
clicking of _kukris_--those vicious Gurkha knives.
On the right there was no rush. The Highlanders, cannily commending
their souls to God (for it matters as much to a dead man whether he
has been shot in a Border scuffle or at Waterloo), opened out and
fired according to their custom, that is to say without heat and
without intervals, while the screw-guns, having disposed of the
impertinent mud fort aforementioned, dropped shell after shell into
the clusters round the flickering green standards on the heights.
'Charrging is an unfortunate necessity,' murmured the Colour-Sergeant
of the right company of the Highlanders. 'It makes the men sweer so,
but I am thinkin' that it will come to a charrge if these black devils
stand much longer. Stewarrt, man, you're firing into the eye of the
sun, and he'll not take any harm for Government ammuneetion. A foot
lower and a great deal slower! What are the English doing? They're
very quiet there in the centre. Running again?'
The English were not running. They were hacking and hewing and
stabbing, for though one white man is seldom physically a match for an
Afghan in a sheepskin or wadded coat, yet, through the pressure of
many white men behind, and a certain thirst for revenge in his heart,
he becomes capable of doing much with both ends of his rifle. The Fore
and Aft held their fire till one bullet could drive through five or
six men, and the front of the Afghan force gave on the volley. They
then selected their men, and slew them with deep gasps and short
hacking coughs, and groanings of leather belts against strained
bodies, and realised for the first time that an Afghan attacked is far
less formidable than an Afghan attacking: which fact old soldiers
might have told them.
But they had no old soldiers in their ranks.
The Gurkhas' stall at the bazar was the noisiest, for the men were
engaged--to a nasty noise as of beef being cut on the block--with the
_kukri_, which they preferred to the bayonet; well knowing how the
Afghan hates the half-moon blade.
As the Afghans wavered, the green standards on the mountain moved down
to assist them in a last rally. This was unwise. The Lancers chafing
in the right gorge had thrice despatched their only subaltern as
galloper to report on the progress of affairs. On the third occasion
he returned, with a bullet-graze on his knee, swearing strange oaths
in Hindustani, and saying that all things were ready. So that Squadron
swung round the right of the Highlanders with a wicked whistling of
wind in the pennons of its lances, and fell upon the remnant just
when, according to all the rules of war, it should have waited for the
foe to show more signs of wavering.
But it was a dainty charge, deftly delivered, and it ended by the
Cavalry finding itself at the head of the pass by which the Afghans
intended to retreat; and down the track that the lances had made
streamed two companies of the Highlanders, which was never intended by
the Brigadier. The new development was successful. It detached the
enemy from his base as a sponge is torn from a rock, and left him
ringed about with fire in that pitiless plain. And as a sponge is
chased round the bath-tub by the hand of the bather, so were the
Afghans chased till they broke into little detachments much more
difficult to dispose of than large masses.
'See!' quoth the Brigadier. 'Everything has come as I arranged. We've
cut their base, and now we'll bucket 'em to pieces.'
A direct hammering was all that the Brigadier had dared to hope for,
considering the size of the force at his disposal; but men who stand
or fall by the errors of their opponents may be forgiven for turning
Chance into Design. The bucketing went forward merrily. The Afghan
forces were upon the run--the run of wearied wolves who snarl and bite
over their shoulders. The red lances dipped by twos and threes, and,
with a shriek, up rose the lance-butt, like a spar on a stormy sea, as
the trooper cantering forward cleared his point. The Lancers kept
between their prey and the steep hills, for all who could were trying
to escape from the valley of death. The Highlanders gave the fugitives
two hundred yards' law, and then brought them down, gasping and
choking ere they could reach the protection of the boulders above. The
Gurkhas followed suit; but the Fore and Aft were killing on their own
account, for they had penned a mass of men between their bayonets and
a wall of rock, and the flash of the rifles was lighting the wadded
coats.
'We cannot hold them, Captain Sahib!' panted a Ressaidar of Lancers.
'Let us try the carbine. The lance is good, but it wastes time.'
They tried the carbine, and still the enemy melted away--fled up the
hills by hundreds when there were only twenty bullets to stop them. On
the heights the screw-guns ceased firing--they had run out of
ammunition--and the Brigadier groaned, for the musketry fire could not
sufficiently smash the retreat. Long before the last volleys were
fired, the doolies were out in force looking for the wounded. The
battle was over, and, but for want of fresh troops, the Afghans would
have been wiped off the earth. As it was they counted their dead by
hundreds, and nowhere were the dead thicker than in the track of the
Fore and Aft.
But the Regiment did not cheer with the Highlanders, nor did they
dance uncouth dances with the Gurkhas among the dead. They looked
under their brows at the Colonel as they leaned upon their rifles and
panted.
'Get back to camp, you. Haven't you disgraced yourself enough for one
day! Go and look to the wounded. It's all you're fit for,' said the
Colonel. Yet for the past hour the Fore and Aft had been doing all
that mortal commander could expect. They had lost heavily because they
did not know how to set about their business with proper skill, but
they had borne themselves gallantly, and this was their reward.
A young and sprightly Colour-Sergeant, who had begun to imagine
himself a hero, offered his water-bottle to a Highlander, whose tongue
was black with thirst. 'I drink with no cowards,' answered the
youngster huskily, and, turning to a Gurkha, said, 'Hya, Johnny! Drink
water got it?' The Gurkha grinned and passed his bottle. The Fore and
Aft said no word.
They went back to camp when the field of strife had been a little
mopped up and made presentable, and the Brigadier, who saw himself a
Knight in three months, was the only soul who was complimentary to
them. The Colonel was heart-broken, and the officers were savage and
sullen.
'Well,' said the Brigadier, 'they are young troops of course, and it
was not unnatural that they should retire in disorder for a bit.'
'Oh, my only Aunt Maria!' murmured a junior Staff Officer. 'Retire in
disorder! It was a bally run!'