THE FORT OF MAHMOUD SHAH.
Resolutely had Leslie Colville defended the summit of the somewhat
isolated tower on which he had taken post with only four chosen
marksmen, intending to enfilade the front attack on the Residency,
and pick off the best shots in possession of the lofty arsenal roof;
but he had soon the mortification to see each of his men perish in
quick succession, and to find the tower in flames beneath him,
cutting off his descent, and leaving him helplessly exposed to a fire
from those who must soon have smitten him down but for the frantic
fury with which they impeded each other's aim and operations; and
while thus perilously situated he heard friendly voices--or such he
thought them to be--calling to him from below in Hindustani.
He looked down, and on a gun-platform about twenty feet from where he
stood were four natives, Hindostanees, as appeared by their
costume--the turban, with a couple of scarfs each, one wrapped round
the body, and the other over the shoulders, leaving the rest of the
body uncovered--holding outstretched a strong horse-rug or blanket,
into which they invited him to drop himself, and trust to them and to
their united strength for breaking his fall.
'Chullo, sahib--golee chulte!' (come along, sir--the balls are
flying) cried one.
'Chullo, bhai--chullo, pultania sahib!' (Come on, brother--come,
battalion officer) cried the other three, also in a kind of
Hindustani; so Colville never doubted but that they were
Hindoos--perhaps camp-followers--and Hindoos they certainly were.
He paused for a moment, irresolute whether to trust to them or--what?
Meet death amid the flames which had cut off his retreat, and all
chance of rejoining his struggling companions--the flames that were
fast ascending in the tower from storey to storey, and would soon be
bursting through the flat roof on which he stood, for already the
smoke was rising like a black column through the trap-door by which
he had reached it.
He failed to see the fierce expression of mockery and derision which
was in the dark faces of the four men below, and, deeming it wiser to
risk and trust them than to perish amid the flames, he dropped into
the rug, in which they received him with shrill yells of triumph, for
the plunder of his person, combined with his murder, were their
objects.
But Colville was too quick for them. In leaping over he had
relinquished the rifle he had been using for his sword, and with the
latter, after baffling an attempt they made to muffle or bundle him
up in the rug, while they were staggering beneath his weight, he
waved them back just as they rushed upon him with their sharp
charahs, and such blind hate and fury that they all wounded each
other.
He then put his back against the wall, and kept them at bay with his
sword-blade and levelled revolver, which, although they knew not, was
unfortunately empty.
Streaming with blood from the wounds they had inflicted on each
other, they strove to close in upon him, and speedily several
budmashes with sword and shield, and other villains variously armed,
came upon the scene, and their cries were loud and fierce.
'Astafferullah! put his head in a bhoosa bag, or one stuffed with
chillies!'
'No, let it be in a bag of red pepper, and then let him die the death
of the doomed!'
That he would have been bayoneted or shot and cut to pieces there and
then was beyond a doubt, had not a horseman furiously intervened by
dashing his steed between him and the rabble, who recoiled in
recognition of his presence and authority as a sirdir, and he
presented his right hand to Colville, exclaiming,
'I ate of your bread and salt on that night when you saved me from
the Wahabi dogs in Jellalabad, and when I swore by the Koran and by
the Five Keys of Knowledge never to forget your kindness--nor do I
now!'
As he spoke Colville, even in that supreme moment of excitement and
most deadly peril, recognised again Mahmoud Shah, the mock Hadji,
with the Israeliteish features, the complexion fairer than most
Afghans, and the livid sword-mark that traversed his right cheek.
The fanatic, for such he was, had for Colville gratitude, and when
that exists there is always good-will.
Mechanically the latter grasped the hand held out to him, while the
scowling mob, with gleaming eyes and weapons, dark and scowling
visages, drew back.
'So--sirdir--you and the Hadji Mahmoud are the same?' exclaimed
Colville.
'One and the same--I am that eater of dirt!' he added, to show his
humility.
He ordered Colville to give up his arms, and, sending him under a
strong escort of his own people out of the city, once more addressed
himself to the congenial task of pressing the attack upon the
Residency--a task which he continued to the bitter end.
Meanwhile Colville was conveyed, a prisoner, to one of the many forts
which stud the plain of Cabul and the heights of Beymaroo that
overhang it.
Mahmoud had suddenly become his protector in fulfilment of the old
precept of being true to his salt; and Colville, who in his heart was
intensely thankful to Heaven for the succour afforded to him, while
so many poor fellows were perishing without mercy, felt confident
that while with Mahmoud, or under his care, he was tolerably safe;
for it is well known that after eating the bread and salt of another,
or even salt alone, one, according to Oriental ideas, comes under
peculiar obligations of protection and friendship.
As an illustration of this, Lane tells us, in one of his valuable
notes to the 'Arabian Tales,' of a daring robber, who, one night,
excavated a passage into the palace of the Governor of Sijistan,
where he made up a great bale of gold and jewels; he was in the act
of carrying it off, when, in the dark, his foot happened to strike
against something hard on the floor. Believing it to be a jewel of
some kind--perhaps a great diamond--he picked it up, and on applying
his tongue to it, found that it was nothing else but a lump of rock
salt.
Bitter was his disappointment, 'for having once tasted the salt of
the ocean, his aversion gave way to his respect for the laws of
hospitality; and throwing down his precious booty, he left it behind
him, and withdrew empty-handed to his habitation.'
But Colville remembered, as old Colonel Spatterdash had told him
scores of times, how Asiatics can quibble in this very matter; and
that in the great Mutiny how often the Sepoys swore 'to be true to
their salt,' and not to murder their officers, but stood placidly and
approvingly by while the Pandies of other regiments slaughtered them.
In this fashion Mahmoud Shah might be true to _his_ salt. Who can
say or fathom the cruel duplicity of the Oriental mind and nature?
And, with these painful surmises and doubts in his mind, Colville
heard the roar of the conflict in and around the doomed Residency
dying away in the distance as the gates of the fort by the Cabul
river were closed behind him.
As he entered, he looked back to the fatal Bala Hissar. The smoke of
the conflict, mingled with that of the conflagration, was eddying
about its picturesque towers and embattled masses on the mountain
slope, all bathed in ruddy splendour by the setting sun. What was
being enacted there now? he thought. Was all over now? Had the last
of the brave fallen?
After sunset Mahmoud Shah arrived at the fort, which was his own
patrimonial stronghold, and assured Colville that all was ended--the
last man was slain, and the valour of the Cabulees had been
successful.
'Success shows the hand of God, and of Mahomet the Prophet, blessed
be their names!' he added.
His arrival at the fort was the signal for a species of ovation among
his followers, who mustered some hundreds, all villainous but
picturesque tatterdemalions, whose arms were as varied as the fashion
and colours of their costume. Many had girdles of leather, from
which hung bags for bullets, slugs, and flints, powder-horns and
cases for cartridges. Others had cummerbunds, in which were stuck
pistols, daggers, charahs, and British bayonets in such numbers that
it would have been puzzling to find room for one weapon more.
In addition to all this paraphernalia, every man had a tulwar, and a
juzail, or flint or match-lock rifle, in his hand.
Colville was compelled to dissemble his hatred and horror of those
who had so wantonly slaughtered his brave companions, many of whose
bright, joyous, and handsome English faces came so painfully to
memory at that time, all lying cold and gashed and bloody among the
ruins of the Residency; and that horror was blended with a great
disgust of his host and protector, when he recalled the tragedy his
treachery was supposed to have brought to pass with the squadron of
the 10th Hussars; that he was a spy who had imposed upon himself at
Jellalabad, and had led the Ameer's rebel tribes against us on more
than one occasion; but with all this, policy, and his own personal
safety, and hope of ultimate freedom compelled him to dissemble.
'Are you thirsty, sahib?' was the first question Mahmoud asked him on
quitting his saddle.
'Yes; dying with it! Who could be otherwise after the horrors and
exertion of the past day?' exclaimed Colville.
'Drink, then--the commands of the Prophet are nothing to you,' said
Mahmoud, as he gave him a large cup filled with Cabul wine (which has
a flavour not unlike full-bodied Madeira), and with it a bunch of the
grapes of Ghuznee, which are greatly superior to those that grow in
the plain of Cabul; and Colville, half-sinking with exhaustion caused
by bodily fatigue and fierce over-excitement, thought he had never
had refreshment more grateful and acceptable.
Built of mud and sun-dried bricks, the fort of Mahmoud was strong and
spacious; it was square, with a squat, round tower at each angle and
a keep in the centre, well loopholed for musketry, armed with
jingals, and those huge swivel blunderbusses named zumbooracks,
which, as firearms, are often as perilous to those who work them as
to those at whom they are levelled.
The fort had two gates, in its eastern and western faces; these were
protected by demi-bastions, and there was a moat, once filled by the
Cabul, but now dry, neglected, and overgrown by vines and
orange-trees.
The courtyard was spacious. In the keep was _Dewan-i-Am_, or
audience-chamber, surrounded by a divan or continuous seat; beyond it
was the _Dewan-i-Kas_, or principal private apartment, and in the
towers were lodged the servants of the establishment; apart from all
was a zenana, or women's apartments, and elsewhere, in every corner,
were stowed away the garrison, composed of the _budmashes_ and other
tatterdemalions just described.
When not in the courtyard or on the summit of the keep--always
closely watched--Colville was generally in the _Dewan-i-Kas_, where
he shared the meals of the Mahmoud. Here carpets were laid on the
floor, and there was a kind of chair or stool of state, with cushions
for arms, and before it lay the tulwar, shield, and pistols of the
sirdir, as in a place of honour.
The fort stood--and no doubt still stands--close to a bend of the
clear and otherwise shallow Cabul, a river which is formed by the
junction of the Ghorbund and Panjshir, and after dividing into three
branches it reunites and flows into the Indus, three miles above the
great fortress of Attock.
And Colville, in his prison in the fort--for a prison to all intents
and purposes it was--lay for many a weary hour on a charpoy, or
native bed, listening to the murmur of the stream as it flowed over
its pebbled bed towards the mountain passes that led to India, and
marvelled what was in store for him; how long his captivity would
last; whether Mahmoud wanted a ransom or held him as a kind of
hostage: for that the destruction of the embassy would be amply
avenged none could doubt. Then how would it fare with the crafty
Ameer?
'He is the son of an animal!' said Mahmoud, on one occasion,
scornfully; 'he plays fast and loose with your people and his own.
According to an old fable, every man bears on his back a wallet in
which are deposited his weaknesses and his vices, which, though
concealed from his own eyes, are open to the inspection of those of
others. Thus we see that the Ameer, if not the tool of Britain, will
be the slave of the Russ.'
'Through his duplicity I am a prisoner.'
'Better that than lying yonder in the Bala Hissar,' said Mahmoud,
with a cruel leer in his glittering black eyes.
'I am most unfortunate!'
'It was to be, and so it is.'
The doctrine of fatalism meets and covers everything with the
Mussulmans, who can thus throw on the Deity the results of their own
negligence.
'If it is God's will that a man should die, let him die,' said
Mahmoud, sententiously. 'If it be His will that he should live, let
him live.'
Colville thought this was uncommonly like the creed of the 'Peculiar
People,' in the city of London.
Though somewhat bored by the prayers and piety of Mahmoud Shah, and
greatly disgusted by his ferocity, Colville had not much otherwise to
complain of during his detention in the fort; and preferred those
times when he was left to himself, when the sirdir secluded himself
in his zenana, or was absent at the many weighty and evidently
important conferences which were being daily held in the palace of
Yakoub Khan. 'It is not good that man should be alone,' we are told;
so, as Mahmoud the pious had at least four wives in his zenana, he
spent much of his precious time there.
The food which he shared with his host was excellent--it could not be
said at table, as it was spread on the floor; but, as knives, forks,
and spoons are things unknown as yet under the shadow of the Hindoo
Kush, it was rather repellant to our fastidious Guardsman to see
Mahmoud rend asunder with his fingers a boiled chicken or daintily
roasted hill _chuckore_ (or Greek partridge), to hand him a piece
with his brown-hued digits, which ever and anon he put half-way down
his throat.
'Eat, sahib,' he would say; 'remember the proverb--touch the stomach
and you injure the vitals, but cherish it and you gain heart.'
'But my heart sinks when I think of the friends I have lost through
vile treachery.'
'It was the will of God your people should perish in the Bala
Hissar,' replied Mahmoud, quietly, as he filled his mouth with a
handful of boiled rice and green chillies. 'What says the Koran?
"When God willeth evil on a people there shall be none to avert it,
neither shall they have any protector beside Him. It is He who
causeth the lightning to appear unto you, to strike fear, to raise
hope, and who formeth the pregnant clouds." Praise God for His
bounty; eat and have no heavy thoughts. The Prophet has written
every man's fatal hour upon his forehead. It is done at his birth.
Yours had not come, on that day in the Bala Hissar.'
Then Colville would think how strange and striking were his
surroundings, and from the bearded face of the sirdir who squatted on
a carpet opposite to him his eyes would wander round the
_Dewan-i-Kas_ where they were eating the evening meal.
A piece of raw cotton floating in oil that was held in an old ladle
wedged into the bare stone wall cast its fitful and lurid glare on
the dark faces, the gleaming eyes, the quaint costumes, and oriental
weapons of the sirdir's men, who marvelled that he fed and housed an
unbeliever, instead of cutting his throat and tossing his carcase to
the jackals of the Beymaroo hills; an unbeliever, who shaved his chin
and not his head; but Allah! how strange were the customs for the
_Feringhee-logue_!
'And fortunate it was for you,' Mahmoud resumed after a time, when
his chibouque was brought him, 'that your hour had not come; but come
it will, and how will it fare with you then? The paradise which is
promised to the pious is not for you,' he continued, plunging at
once, as usual with the Afghans, into the Koran; 'therein are rivers
of incorruptible water and of milk, the taste whereof changeth not;
rivers of wine, pleasant unto those who drink; and of clarified
honey; and therein shall be fruit of a thousand kinds, and a pardon
from the Lord. Shall the man for whom all these are prepared by the
Lord of the Daybreak, be as he who must dwell for ever in the fires
of hell, and will have boiling water given him to drink, which shall
burst his bowels?'
And ever and anon Colville was treated to quotations much to the same
purpose.
Seeing him one day gazing at a photo of Mary Wellwood, the sirdir
became at once full of curiosity.
'One of your wives?' he asked.
'No; but one who is to be my wife, I hope.'
'She cannot be of rank--she has no ring in her nose. Is she
moon-faced?' (_i.e._, handsome.)
'Very; as you see.'
'And you love her very much?'
'I do indeed.'
'Better than your best horse, your camels, and all your fat-tailed
sheep?'
'Better than all the world.'
'Inshallah; perhaps you may see her soon again.'
'Please God, I shall.'
'Do you keep her locked up--in care of your father, or who--as you
are absent, and gone to the wars?'
'Why should I do so?'
'Many of our people, if of rank, lock up their wives when they
travel.'
'Why?'
'They may be false and artful.'
'And what do you do then?'
He only smiled grimly, and touched the carved silver hilt of the
charah in his crimson shawl girdle.
'You treat them with a spirit of selfishness,' said Colville; 'but I
know that even Christian men do the same, by making more severe laws
for women than themselves, forgetting that by so doing they raise
them above themselves.'
But the sirdir knew not what to make of this idea, and so remained
silent.
Nearly three weeks had passed since Colville became a prisoner in the
fort of Mahmoud Shah, and no tidings had reached him of what was
doing in the world of India, beyond the Kyber and other passes, or of
what was transpiring in the city of Cabul.
He knew that tidings of the massacre then must have been flashed home
by the electric telegraph long since, and that poor Mary would now be
mourning for him, as one who was no more!