THE BATTLE OF CHARASIAH.
That something was on the _tapis_, and something like preparation,
and very like consternation too, existed in and about Cabul, became
evident to Leslie Colville, who suspected, though he was ignorant of
the truth, that it was caused by the advance of a British army.
From the square keep of Mahmoud Shah's fort he could see mounted
scouts and regular cavalry patrols hourly scouring the road, while
crowds of Ghilzies and other hillmen, with banners waving and arms
glittering, hovered on the mountain sides; caravans of camels laden
with stores from Ghuznee, Bamian, Parwan, and elsewhere in the rear
passed daily into the gates of Cabul, and more than one train of
cannon too.
All this he saw, but made no comment, and he asked no questions; he
was only glad and thankful to heaven when night fell or day dawned,
that another twelve hours of durance were passed, and that he was
still in the land of the living, or not, perhaps, sold as a slave to
the Beloochees or Usbeg Tartars, till one morning, about an hour or
more before dawn, Mahmoud roused him from the charpoy on which he
slept, and curtly told him that he must come forth.
Leslie Colville's heart beat painfully, and his thoughts flashed home
to Mary Wellwood. Was death--such a murderous death as that by which
Maclain died--about to be meted out to him after all?
He was without arms--helpless; nor would arms have availed him much
in that tower, garrisoned as it was by the fanatical cut-throats of
Mahmoud Shah, whom he followed into the court, where two horses
saddled and ready for the road were standing.
'Mount,' said Mahmoud; 'mount and come with me, while the morning is
yet dark--we have not a moment to lose.'
They quitted the tower by its western gate, and took together at a
hard gallop the road that led, as Colville knew by past experience,
along the left bank of the Cabul river, and, leaving all the
scattered forts, walled gardens, and orchards behind, runs by Khoord
Cabul and the Suffaidh Sang towards the Shutargardan Pass; and now
for the first time genuine hope began to dawn in his heart.
'Hark!' cried Mahmoud; 'what sound is that?'
'A British trumpet call,' replied Colville.
'Yes--and look!' said his guide, whom Colville now perceived was clad
completely in spotless white, the costume of a Ghazi, assumed by
those Moslem fanatics who devote themselves to death in battle for
their Faith, and to achieving the death of all unbelievers.
Day was breaking now, and already the snow-clad peaks of some of
those hills which are above eleven thousand feet in height, tipped
with rosy dawn as with fire, stood sharply up against the deep blue
sky, and, after a ten miles' ride from the vicinity of the city,
Mahmoud Shah drew his reins, and again said, 'Look!'
Then Colville could see the gleam of arms in the distance, and as the
gleam was steady he knew it was a sign of troops advancing.
'Your people are there,' said Mahmoud; 'join them, but keep out of my
way for the future, and tempt me no more; for never again, had we
eaten a peck of salt together, will I spare the life of an
unbeliever; I have sworn it by the ninety-nine holy attributes and
the Black Stone of Mecca! Go--and go with God, though Eblis is more
powerful yonder. There are the unbelievers who say the blessed Koran
is a lie, and who seek to turn us aside from the gods our fathers
worshipped, and of whom it was written on that Night of Power, when
the word came down from Heaven, they shall taste the fires of hell,
which like molten metal will devour their entrails!'
His dark eyes flashed as he spoke, and he ground his set teeth in the
fury of his fanaticism.
'Allah Shookr!' he exclaimed, and, without waiting for a single word
of thanks from Colville, wheeled his horse sharply round, and
galloped away towards the distant city at full speed; and a
picturesque figure he looked, in his snowy camise and loose mantle,
his long, white loonghee floating in the morning breeze, his juzail
slung across his back, and the head of his tall, tasselled lance
gleaming in the sunshine.
Colville devoutly hoped they would never meet again; yet he had not
seen quite the last of Mahmoud Shah.
He now rode joyfully on towards the two parties of British cavalry
which were then in sight, and who were--though he knew it not--about
to inaugurate those operations which brought on the battle of
Charasiah--or 'The Four Water Mills,' a spot about twelve British
miles from Cabul.
The troops of Roberts had encamped there for the night, after passing
through the picturesque defile called the Sung-i-Navishta. All the
vicinity had been scoured by our cavalry patrols, and, little aware
that they were on the eve of a bloody engagement, the soldiers, weary
with a long day's march, had turned in early.
Daybreak on this eventful day saw two cavalry patrols pushing along
the roads that lead from Charasiah to Cabul. Captain Neville, of the
14th Bengal Lancers, with twenty men of that corps, took that one
which, after crossing the Chardeh Valley, enters the south-western
suburbs of the city, while the southern road, leading through the
Sung-i-Navishta, was taken by Captain Apperley, with twenty of the
9th Lancers, and Robert Wodrow, as he had so recently trod the ways
there on foot, now rode with him as a guide.
At nine a.m., a puff of smoke came suddenly from the loopholed-wall
of a village, and Wodrow's horse fell under him, killed by a musket
ball. Apperley reported that he had occupied another village, and
was now hard pressed by the enemy, on which a field-officer and
twenty more Lancers came on to his succour, while some native
infantry went at the double in the direction of Captain Neville's
party.
Robert Wodrow was in the act of getting his carbine unstrapped from
his dead horse when a mounted man suddenly came upon him clad in a
sorely frayed and tattered blue patrol jacket, and wearing on his
head a scarlet Afghan loonghee, and great was his astonishment and
noisy and genuine his joy on discovering that this solitary and
unarmed rider was Leslie Colville, whom he had long since numbered
with the slain among the ashes of the Residency.
They shook hands again and again warmly. Each had a hundred
questions to ask the other, but both had little information to give,
as Colville had been mewed up in Mahmoud's fort since the day of the
massacre, and no tidings from home in any way or of any kind had
reached Robert Wodrow.
'And now, without a moment's delay, I must report myself at
headquarters,' said Colville.
'The General and staff are as yet some miles in the rear, sir,'
replied Wodrow, recalled by the remark to their relative positions,
'and I shall guide you. By the carbine and musketry fire in front
our two cavalry patrols seem, to be catching it, and I must somehow
get another horse. We have plenty of time. The infantry have yet
some miles to come!'
Wodrow seemed now alternately in very sad or in the wildest spirits.
With Colville's presence, his voice and kindly face, the young
fellow's thoughts and memories went keenly and vividly back to the
past time at Birkwoodbrae, to the manse of Kirktoun-Mailler, and all
the old associations of Ellinor Wellwood and his home.
Then, indeed, he forgot for a time that he was only a corporal of
Hussars, as Colville did that he was an officer of the Guards, and
they chummed like old friends together.
'Share with me the contents of my haversack and flask, Captain
Colville,' said Robert Wodrow, as they sat for a few minutes by the
banks of a wayside runnel. 'We are going into action again--that is
pretty evident. "Few, few shall part where many meet"--you know what
the poet says; and I care little if it be my chance to fall--after
all--after all I have undergone.'
'Don't say so, Wodrow,' said Colville, in a tone of reprehension.
'Why the deuce are you so low in spirit now?'
'I should not be, now that I have met you again, Captain Colville,'
replied Wodrow, as he received back his flask and took a long pull at
it; 'but I feel--I feel--I don't know how to-day. It is not fear,
but as if something was about to happen to me; and a song--a song
that she--Ellinor--used to sing seems to haunt my memory now.'
'What song? "The Birks of Invermay"?'
'No--another, and at this moment her very voice seems in my ears,' he
said, in broken accent.
'And this song of Ellinor's----'
'Ran thus,' said Wodrow, and, with a low voice and a certain humidity
in his eyes, he actually sang a now forgotten song--
'Thy way along life's bright path lies,
Where flowers spring up before thee,
And faithful hearts and loving eyes
Assemble to adore thee.
The great and wise bend at thy shrine,
The fair and young pursue thee,
Fame's chaplets round thy temples twine,
And pleasure smiles to woo thee.
'Yet, 'mid each blessing time can bring,
Thy breast is still repining;
'Tis cold as Ammon's icy spring,
O'er which no sun is shining;
And friendship's presence has no charm--
And beauty's smiles are blighted,
Nor joy, nor fame the heart can warm,
That early love has slighted.'
'And _blighted_ has mine been, as you know, Captain Colville,' he
added, more sadly than bitterly.
'Come, Wodrow, don't pose as a "blighted being," any way,' said the
other, who saw with pain the emotion of his comrade, and feared it
sprang from one not unfrequently met with on service, the
presentiment of coming death. 'Here comes a Hussar on the spur from
the front.'
'Toby Chace!' exclaimed Wodrow, as that individual came powdering
along the road, but reined up sharply for a moment or so. 'Whither
so fast?'
'I am sent back to report that the enemy in great force are advancing
from the direction of the city, and occupying the defile and range of
hills between this and Cabul, completely barring our advance. The
Ghilzies are all mustering, and the road to Zahidabad, where the
fifth division has encamped, is threatened.'
'That is the road by which General Macpherson is advancing with a
great convoy of stores and ammunition.'
'Yes--so no doubt we shall have to carry the heights before evening.'
Toby Chace now recognised that Colville was an officer, though in
somewhat dilapidated garments, and saluted him, colouring deeply,
almost painfully, as he did so.
'My comrade, Toby Chace, Captain Colville,' said Wodrow; 'he is like
myself, a reduced gentleman, and will die, I hope, a baronet.'
'I am not in a hurry about that,' said Toby, and, as Colville bowed
to him, he saluted again, and proffered his brandy-flask, a silver
hunting one, on which a coat of arms was engraved--a relic of better
days at Melton and elsewhere. 'I have only a ration biscuit to offer
you, sir,' said Toby, laughing; 'but once into Cabul, we shall have
luxuries galore--_cotelettes de mouton à l'Ameer_--mutton chops and
green chillis. And now to deliver my report!' he added, and, putting
spurs to his horse, rode off in the direction of Kushi, while
Colville and Robert Wodrow followed him as fast as they could. There
was no time to be lost now, as the events of the day were rapidly
developing themselves.
Colville reported himself to General Baker (whose brigade was coming
on), and joined that officer's staff, on procuring arms, while Wodrow
bade him farewell, and joined the squadron of Lancers to which he was
attached.
Captain Apperley's command of the latter he had now dismounted, and
posted in a shallow ditch that surrounded a square mud fort, in which
he placed the chargers. A range of steep hills rose in front of this
improvised post, and through them lay the Sung-i-Navishta Pass--which
means the 'Place of the Written Stone,' from an ancient Persian
inscription carved on a mass of rock in the centre of the defile,
stating that the road then had been made in the reign of Shah Jehan,
who was crowned at Agra in 1628.
Hills, steep, barren, and stony, were on the left of this post, and
there were grey garden walls, from which the Afghans were firing
briskly, but as most of their balls went into the air, it was evident
that they were ignorant of how to sight the rifles they were handling.
A small party of the 12th Bengal Cavalry dismounted, held a walled
garden on the right of this post, and kept up a rattling carbine fire
on the enemy, who took cover among ground so rough and broken that no
cavalry in the saddle could act against them.
To succour these advanced parties, whose posts were now enveloped in
whirls of eddying smoke, streaked by incessant jets or flashes of
fire, the Royal Artillery guns came on under Major Parry, with a wing
of the Gordon Highlanders under Major Stewart White, with some of the
23rd Pioneers and two squadrons of the 5th Punjaub Cavalry, all sent
by General Baker, who assigned to this mixed but slender force the
severe task of carrying these garrisoned heights.
Old Spatterdash as he went to the front had just time to wring
Colville's hand and congratulate him, but in doing so reeled a little
in his saddle. In fact, at that early hour he was still groggy from
his potations over night, and said, in a feathery voice,
'S'cuse me, Colville, but that infernal bullet I got at Lucknow is
troubling me as usual.'
A few minutes more saw Spatterdash lying on his back, shot through
the head, and a riderless horse galloping rearward with loose reins,
while very heavy firing on the left announced that Baker was pushing
on towards the hills, and all along their green slopes could be seen
the white smoke of cannon and rifles eddying and rolling before the
soft morning breeze.
As Major White pushed on with his somewhat mixed command, Colville
could see the rocky heights on both flanks of the Sung-i-Navishta
Pass manned by dark masses of the enemy, all ranked under numerous
standards that streamed in the breeze, red, blue, green, white, and
yellow, the colours of the different mountain tribes, or of the
fortified villages from which they came.
There, too, were the sombre battalions of the Ameer's revolted
infantry, clad in brown tunics faced with scarlet; and, most
conspicuous of all, were a horde of Ghazis, furious and inflamed
fanatics, in purest white, led by several chiefs, but most notably by
Mahmoud Shah.
Parry's battery now opened fire on the crowds that covered the
nearest hill, and, while yells of defiance mingled with the din of
the guns and musketry, four Afghan rifled mountain guns in the Pass
replied, making very good practice against us indeed, and waking the
echoes of the rocks that overhang the Logur river.
'Let the guns continue to advance, and pound the nearest hill where
these fellows with the standards are,' said Major White, adding
proudly and confidently, 'With my Highlanders alone I shall sweep the
enemy from those hills on our right.'
Parry then advanced his guns to within fifteen hundred yards, and
again opened fire. His cavalry escort was commanded by Major
Mitford, who says, 'We had thus leisure to watch the advance of the
92nd, which was a splendid sight. The dark green kilts went up the
steep rocky hillside at a fine rate, though one would occasionally
drop, and roll several feet down the slope, showing that the rattling
fire kept up by the enemy was not all display. Both sides took
advantage of every atom of cover, but still the gallant kilts pressed
on and up, and it was altogether as pretty a piece of light infantry
drill as could be seen.'
Meanwhile Parry's guns were sending shell after shell with beautiful
precision to the crest of the hill he was ordered 'to pound.' They
exploded with dreadful effect whenever and wherever the enemy could
be seen preparing to charge. The Ghazis and Ghilzies lay over each
other in heaps, torn, mangled, and disembowelled, and the white robes
of the former were seen to be splashed and stained with blood; but
still the living yelled and brandished their swords and standards,
and by four p.m., Parry's guns had completely silenced the four that
had been thundering in the echoing pass.
And now it was that the gallant commander of 'the Gay Gordons,' who
were still advancing, won his Victoria Cross, as he stormed the
crowded hills in person. 'Advancing with two companies of his
regiment,' says the _London Gazette_, 'he came upon a body of the
enemy, strongly posted, and outnumbering his force by eighteen to
one. His men being much exhausted, and immediate action necessary,
Major White took a rifle, and going on by himself, shot the leader of
the enemy.'
The fall of this personage, who was deemed invulnerable, so
intimidated the enemy that they fled down the mountain side, while
the Highlanders crowned its crest with a ringing cheer, and then,
plunging with their bayonets into the dark defile of the
Sung-i-Navishta, they captured the four mountain guns, the horses of
which lay disembowelled, dead, or dying in the limber traces. So
swift was the rush of the Gordon Highlanders that they had only nine
casualties at this point.
With the Albany Highlanders in the van, General Baker pushed along
the road towards Chardeh, the 5th Ghoorkas, 5th Punjaubees, and 23rd
Pioneers following them, till the whole were opposed on strong and
precipitous ground by four thousand Afghans ranged under six large
and brightly-coloured standards.
Upward and onward went our troops under a withering rifle fire, the
echoes of which reverberated a hundredfold among the hills, as they
were tossed back from peak to peak. For two hours the fight went on,
our troops loading and firing with great coolness and deliberation;
and then was seen the fearful triumph of the breechloading weapon of
precision when properly sighted, for each successive row of swarthy
men, as they crowned the ridges of rock, was mown down by a deadly
fire, as wheat goes prone to the earth before the scythe of the
mower, till after a time it seemed that scarcely a man stood up alive
after the delivery of these thundering tempests of lead.
The deadly Gatling guns (the pepper castors, as the soldiers named
them) proved of little use, owing to the acute angle of elevation;
but at last the heights were taken in rear by a flank movement of the
Gordon Highlanders, who, with colours flying and all their pipes
playing, came storming up the steep slopes, and, crowning the
summits, swept the enemy away, or all that remained of them.
By four o'clock the Afghans were everywhere in full flight to Cabul,
with the loss of many colours, twenty pieces of cannon, and a host of
killed and wounded.
Strong pickets were posted for the night, as the Ghilzies and Mahmoud
Shah's Ghazis were hovering about. The troops bivouacked, as the
tents and baggage were all packed for the advance to Cabul on the
morrow.
During all the events of this most exciting day, by the difference of
their rank and duties, Colville had, of course, seen nothing of
Robert Wodrow, and feared that his presentiment had been fulfilled,
till he heard from one of the staff what the general had recorded in
the last paragraph of his despatch--a paragraph that excited utter
bewilderment, and joy too, in the hearts of some that were far away,
and had heard nothing of the absent one since the terrible
catastrophe in the Cabul river:--
'Corporal Robert Wodrow, of the 10th Hussars (doing duty with the
squadron of H.M. 9th Lancers), having carried a message for me, on
the spur, through a most disastrous fire, after two aides-de-camp and
an orderly officer had fallen wounded successively in attempting this
perilous duty, I have the honour to recommend him for a commission in
the infantry, and also for the Victoria Cross.'
After they had read this, his old parents, as they looked from the
manse windows of Kirktoun-Mailler, knew why their kindly parish folk
lit that huge bonfire which they then saw blazing on the summit of
Craigmhor.
With hearts that were very full the kindly old couple stood hand
clasped in hand, as when he had first won her girlish love among the
'siller' Birks of Invermay, and, though they were very silent now,
their souls were filled with prayer and prayerful thoughts.