THE FUGITIVE.
Ignorant that Taimur, the Usbeg Tartar, the Guide soldier, was
preceding him, Robert Wodrow--full of longing for dire and terrible
vengeance on those who had destroyed his comrades and friends, among
them more especially Leslie Colville, as he never doubted--trod
resolutely on to reach Lundi-Khana Kotal, or any outpost at the head
of the Kurram Valley.
From the circumstance of Robert Wodrow being a gentleman by birth and
education, and that both had loved two sisters, there had been a bond
of friendship between the staff-captain and the luckless private of
hussars.
They were Europeans--another tie; and more than all, when so far away
from all who loved them, they were 'brother Scots.'
Hungry and athirst--though the latter suffering could be appeased at
any passing stream--the evening of the day after the massacre, when
Wodrow finally turned his back upon the smoking ruins of the
Residency, saw him disguised and armed as we have described,
resolutely pursuing the mountain-path which led, he knew, from Cabul,
past Buthak towards the Lataband Pass, a distance of twenty-two
miles; but, disguised though he was, he felt that it was necessary
for his safety to avoid all towns and villages, among which, no
doubt, news of the destruction of the Feringhees must have spread
like wildfire.
He found himself in a solitude--a place of the most intense
loneliness, so he paused to rest himself awhile beside a runnel that
trickled down the rocks, and to gather a few wild apples and grapes.
On one side rose the Katcha mountains to the height of eight thousand
feet; on the other were mountains quite as lofty. It was such a
scene and place as would require the pencil of Salvator Rosa to
depict, so deep were the shadows in the dark and savage passes, so
red the light that glowed on the eastern slopes of the mighty hills
as the sun veered westward.
Vast groves of jelgoozeh pines, black and solemn, cast a gloom in
some places; in others the sturdy, snake-like roots of the
banyan-tree curled and twisted themselves among the rocks, and
through the holes and crevices of a little ruined musjid, or wayside
house of prayer, built of red and white marble, which was open and
empty.
Wodrow looked at it wistfully, as if he would select it as a place
wherein to pass the night and escape the mountain dews; but he
thought of the snakes he had seen, and scorpions too, and remembered,
with a shudder, the huge and venomous reptiles of that kind he had
seen on the plains of Peshawur.
He selected a crevice in the rocks where a quantity of dry and dead
leaves had been drifted by the wind, put his Afghan shield and tulwar
under his head as a pillow, muffled his furred choga around him, and,
soldier-like, accustomed to sleep anywhere, anyhow, or at any time,
he slept till morning was well in, so much had he been overcome by
the weariness of the preceding twenty-four hours.
Another ten miles would bring him, he knew, to Jugdulluk--that place
of evil omen and blood--towards which the lonely fugitive trod on
through black and frowning gorges, where fantastic rocks, savage and
weird, flung grey and purple shadows that made the deeper passes dark
as midnight, and there the waters of the mountains could be seen
reflecting the sky above, as they rolled through the obscurity so far
down below.
In some parts the mountains rose the perfection of naked desolation,
appalling in their silence and sublimity, looking like the scene of
some Titanic conflict in ages unknown, and yet every foot of the way
there had been traced in British blood--the blood of Elphinstone's
massacred army in the war of 1841.
At one point, as Robert Wodrow was proceeding along a narrow ledge
above a giddy precipice, where the mists of a foaming torrent
streamed upward from the deep dark chasm below, he had a narrow
escape, at the thought of which his blood ran cold.
At one place, treading over a loose spot, the earth and splintered
rock gave way beneath his feet, and before he could recover himself
he fell upon a lower ledge, some fifteen feet beneath, where he lay
for a time, half stunned and scarcely daring to breathe.
At that moment death seemed close indeed!
He was only five yards from the edge of a precipice, the height of
which his mind failed to fathom, and, as one in a dreadful dream, he
crawled upward and away from it on his hands and knees, till a surer
and less perilous route--path it could not be called--was won, and he
resumed his way with a prayer of thankfulness on his lips and in his
heart--one of the prayers he had learned as a child at his mother's
knee in the old manse of Kirktoun-Mailler.
His anxiety and disquietude were increased now by hearing more than
once amid these profound solitudes the moaning yell of a hyæna,
responded to by that other peculiar sound which seems to be something
between the wail of a child and the howl of a dog--the cry of the
jackal; thus, the peril of hostile men apart, he was not sorry when
he came suddenly upon a species of village in a hollow of the
hills--we say a species of village, as it did not consist of built
houses, but only some seven or eight huts.
The dwellings, poor and mean, were formed of stakes cut from the
adjacent forest, with walls formed of wicker-work plastered with mud,
and called 'wattle and dab;' leaves of trees and jungle grass formed
the roof, and all around them was jungle tainting the air, and to the
European very suggestive of fever and miasma.
The inhabitants were rude and simple shepherds, whose _doombas_, or
fat-tailed Persian sheep, were grazing in the neighbouring valley,
and they seemed somewhat awed by the gaunt, tall, and keen-eyed
warrior, who, with shield and tulwar, pistols and dagger, his
floating loongee and cloak, alike stained with what was too evidently
blood, suddenly appeared among them and asked for food, offering for
it a handful of _kusiras_, or Afghan pence.
From them he got milk, chupattees, and a _cuddoo_, or gourd full of
curry and rice, of which he ate like a famished kite, while the
wondering shepherds looked on without questioning, and evidently
impressed by the swagger and adopted ferocity of his bearing,
believing he could be no other than 'a very devil of a _budmash_' (or
swashbuckler) steeped in the blood of the Feringhees.
Refreshed now, he resolved to lose no time in pushing on, saying that
he was going to Tezeen, which was not the case, as it lay some miles
on his right, but pursued the path towards the Suffaidh Sang, and was
warned at parting to beware of a certain place, marked by some ruined
walls, which were the abode of the Ghoule Biaban.
Had these shepherds penetrated his disguise or doubted him? He
almost feared so, as he saw a little group of them, clad in their
loose blouses and conical caps of black fur, conferring together and
watching him as he disappeared over a _kotal_, a place where the road
dipped down.
Sunset and falling darkness--after which it was perilous to travel in
such localities--found him at the ruined walls referred to as the
abode of the Ghoule, and there in a little clump of wild pistachio
trees he took up his quarters for the night, rightly supposing that
all natives would sedulously shun a place haunted by such a dreadful
demon as the Ghoule Biaban, or Spirit of the Waste--a gigantic and
hideous spectre, with a red tail and claws like a _syces_ sickle, who
is supposed to haunt all lonely places in Afghanistan and devour any
passenger whose evil fortune casts him in his way.
No ghoule came to Robert Wodrow in his sleep, but a delightful dream,
which made him long remember the pistachio tope amid the lonely
waste--a dream of Ellinor Wellwood!
So powerful, so vivid, was this dream that he almost said to himself
was it in sleep she came before him?
He dreamed that she was beside him and imploring his forgiveness,
took his hands in her own, and pressed her lips passionately to them.
Then her cheek seemed to touch his, and he could feel her soft sweet
breath, and her dear eyes looked tenderly into his.
So vivid was that dream that he turned his head on the root of the
tree against which it rested, towards the vision, if we may use the
term, and then, of course, it vanished, and the light of the African
sun streamed between the branches into his eyes.
Robert Wodrow's heart beat hopefully and happily; he felt that he had
looked into the face of his other soul, with the assurance that they
would one day meet again; and that notwithstanding their separation,
and all that had come to pass, they were--perhaps--kindred spirits
after all; and that phrase has a deeper signification than most
people think. 'It is my solemn belief,' says a recent writer, 'that
spirits are wedded before their birth into this world, and that
somewhere, perhaps separated by barriers of space and circumstances,
there exists for every soul its fellow, its complement, whose
imperfections joined to that other's, will make a perfect whole, if
only men and women would not so rashly take the counterfeit for the
real.'
So Robert Wodrow flattered himself that Ellinor, perhaps in a dream
of her own, had somehow come to him in the spirit, a wild and mystic
idea; but, as he examined his arms and ammunition before again
resuming his journey, he found that there had been perilously near
him in the night something as bad, if not worse, than the Ghoule
Biaban!
Amid the sandy mud of a runnel that ran not far from the ruined walls
there were distinctly traceable the prints of tigers' feet, quite
fresh, like the paw-marks of a gigantic cat; so on this night, when
he thought that by the influence of superstition he was unusually
safe, he had been in more than usual peril!
A few miles more would bring him to Gundamuck, a walled village,
twenty-eight miles west of Jellalabad, surrounded by luxuriant
wheat-fields and tall groves of sombre cypresses--the place where
Yakoub Khan and the ill-fated Cavagnari had signed that treaty of
peace which the former had so basely violated; but Gundamuck was a
place to be avoided by the fugitive, who kept among the mountains
above it, thus having to ford more than one tributary of the Surkh-ab
river, and while sighing to think he had still nearly seventy miles
to travel on foot before he would hear the sound of a British bugle,
he struck manfully into paths which presented themselves here and
there, but seemed to be only marked by the tread of beasts of prey.
Among rocky mountains, divested of all verdure and green clothing,
his way lay now for miles, and, if the utter loneliness of the scenes
ensured safety, it was at times not the less impressive and appalling
to the solitary man, and made him think,
'The silent gloom around hath power
To banish aught of gladness;
The good with awful dreams to thrill,
The guilty--drive to madness!'