ONLY AN ENSIGN
A Tale of the Retreat from Cabul.
BY JAMES GRANT,
AUTHOR OF "THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "FIRST LOVE AND LAST LOVE,"
"LADY WEDDERBURN'S WISH," ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
"Come what come may,
Time and the Hour runs through the roughest day."--_Macbeth._
LONDON:
TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE ST., STRAND.
1871.
[_All Rights Reserved._]
LONDON:
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
CONTENTS.
CHAP.
I.--BEYOND THE LAND OF THE SUN
II.--IN THE AFGHAN FORT
III.--THE WARNING
IV.--WHAT TOOK US THERE
V.--TIFFIN WITH THE TRECARRELS
VI.--THE APPOINTMENT
VII.--"THE BAND PLAYS AT TWO"
VIII.--THE DRIVE
IX.--ADVENTURE IN CABUL
X.--THE MOSQUE OF BABER
XI.--"_Only an Ensign_"
XII.--ASSASSINATION
XIII.--HOME IN THE SPIRIT
XIV.--IN THE FORTIFIED CAMP
XV.--CHRISTMAS AT CABUL
XVI.--THE MORNING OF THE RETREAT
XVII.--THE HALT BY THE LOGHUR RIVER
XVIII.--SPIRITED AWAY!
XIX.--THE SKIRMISH
XX.--IN THE KHYBER PASS
XXI.--WALLER'S ADVENTURES
XXII.--CHANCE BETTER THAN DESIGN
XXIII.--DENZIL A NAWAB
XXIV.--A MEETING
XXV.--MARRIED OR NOT?
XXVI--THE WANDERER
XXVII.--THE LOST STEAMER
ONLY AN ENSIGN.
CHAPTER I.
BEYOND THE LAND OF THE SUN.
Far, far away from rough and rocky Cornwall--from steep Tintagel with
all its memories of King Arthur's knights, his "Table Round" and
flirting queen; from the traditionary haunts of its giant Tregeagle,
and from its wondrous mines deep, deep down below even the blue waves
of the Atlantic; far away beyond the Indus and the frontiers of
British India, fifteen hundred miles from Calcutta, and seven hundred
from the shores of the Arabian Gulf, we have to change the scene to
where a British army, under General Elphinstone, was cantoned before
the city of Cabul, ere we can look after the fortunes of Denzil
Devereaux, of whom we have barely thought, while progressing through
an entire volume of our story.
A detachment of his regiment, under a captain named Waller, was
attached to General's Trecarrel's Native Infantry Brigade; and an
afternoon in November of the second year after the military
occupation of the province by her Majesty's troops, found him
quartered, with his brother officers, the aforesaid
captain--popularly known as Bob Waller--a lieutenant named Jack
Polwhele, also of the "Cornish Light Bobs," in one of the little
native forts, of which a dozen or more lay scattered over the plain
between the British cantonments and the bleak range of hills named
Siah Sung, or "the Black Rocks."
The apartment in which the three were seated, each in a bamboo easy
chair and wearing fur-trimmed poshteens (or native pelisses) above
their blue undress surtouts, while they idled over brandy-pawnee and
a box of cigars, was neither luxurious nor splendid, being simply a
portion of a half shattered tower of native construction, before the
windows of which the Bengal Sappers had erected a species of
verandah, as a promenade and shade from the sun in summer; but now
the season was winter; and though the evening was temperate, a fire
blazed merrily in the open grate-less fireplace, and shed a cheerful
glow on the whitewashed walls, the only adornments of which were
certain caricatures (executed by Waller with burnt cork) of the
regimental adjutant, of the brigade major, of "old Elphinstone," or
other personages, to him more or less obnoxious. A charpoy or native
bedstead, a few bullock-trunks, an overland ditto, an iron
washing-stand, several pairs of boots, a few swords, whips, guns and
hogspears, with any number of bottles, full or empty, littering the
corners, made up the splendours of Bob Waller's quarters in the fort,
from which, some two years before, Sir Robert Sale's brigade had
summarily expelled sundry unwilling Kussilbashes at the point of the
bayonet.
The rooms of Denzil and Jack Polwhele in other parts of the same rude
edifice were precisely similar; but their soldiers were hutted in the
cantonments close by.
One window of Waller's room faced the hills to the westward and the
Arab-looking village of Behmaru, which means "the place of the
husbandless," from a legend of the time of old--remote, perhaps, as
the wars of Mohammed Ghori. An Afghan maid of high rank had been
betrothed to a chief whom she tenderly loved; for the Afghans, though
strict Mussulmen, neither seclude their wives, as others usually do,
nor wed without duly winning them. But tidings came that he had
fallen in battle against the Hindoos, on which she pined away and
died. The news, however, was premature, for the chief recovered from
his wounds, and returned to find only her grave on the hillside now
called Behmaru; so he brought from Bourkhor one of those strange and
spectral-like white stones, which, when placed upright, so closely
resemble an eastern woman in her drapery, and set it above her tomb.
In his old age he, too, was laid beneath it, and in time to come a
village sprung up there.
Another window faced the south, affording the more ample view of the
huts and compounds (_i.e._, hedges and palisades) of the British
Cantonments, and about two miles beyond them the great city of Cabul,
surrounded of course by a fortified wall, as what city in that part
of the world is not. Here and there rose above the flat roofs of its
narrow streets the tower or castle of a chief; the dome or minar of a
mosque; and the huge mass of its vast bazaar, built in the time of
Aurengzebe, when it became the trade emporium of Central Asia; and
high over all, the Bala Hissar, or palace (wherein resided the Shah
Sujah, whose power our troops had come most unwisely to uphold) and
which was also the citadel or fortress--a place of vast strength; and
far away in the distance, rising like the waves of a frozen sea
against a deep blue sky, were the mighty peaks of Kohistan and Hindoo
Koosh, in height fourteen thousand feet above the plain, and crowned
by eternal snows, unchanged in aspect and character, as the dwellers
there have been since Alexander marched past them with his Greeks to
the conquest of the Eastern world, and since Malimoud of Ghuznee
poured his hordes across the Indus in the eleventh century.
The boy ensign--he over whose couch a pale, sad mother hung, watching
as he lay asleep and unconscious on the eventful morning of his
departure--watching him tearfully and tenderly while he was _yet her
own_--was now a well knit, well set up and weather-beaten looking
young fellow. A few months of campaigning had changed the erratic
Sandhurst cadet, whose best exploits had been breaking lamps and
dismounting the college guns to spite the governor, into a practical
soldier; and all that remained in him of the mere lad had nearly
given place to the quietly confident air of a man--one who could take
his part in society as the leader of others; one who had faced perils
and surmounted them by his own unaided energy; for already had Denzil
been twice under fire, and had, with a small party, defeated more
than one plundering band of the fierce Beloochees.
Ignorant of the calamitous state of matters at home, and of the
sorrows of his sister, Denzil, with the natural elasticity of youth,
aided by the excitement consequent to military life in the
cantonments of Cabul, had recovered the first shock occasioned by his
father's loss at sea, and hence on the evening we have met him again,
he was in excellent spirits. General Trecarrel had arrived shortly
before this, and was now in command of a brigade. His daughters were
with him, and proved leading attractions in that little circle of
British residents, the European society, military and diplomatic, in
and about Cabul, of which Lady Sale and Lady Macnaghten were the
recognised heads; and Denzil had been duly introduced to Mabel and
Rose by his friend Waller (who had known them in Calcutta), of the
result of which introduction we shall have more to say in time to
come.
Audley Trevelyan had not yet come up country, as he had been landed
on the sick list at Bombay.
The young ladies knew well the story of Constance's alleged marriage,
and Denzil's consequent claim to rank; but the tale seemed strange
and mysterious, and good taste caused them to be silent, and to keep
in the Cantonments and Residency at least what they deemed to be the
secret of Denzil, who was an especial favourite with them both; but
he never took them into his confidence, though he had taken his
friend Waller, one day when they were on guard together at the
arsenal and commissariat fort. On that occasion but little passed,
and it proved a guide for the future conduct of Denzil.
"You remember our quarrel, Bob?" he asked.
"And the interrupted duel--what griffs we were! Yes--well; what of
it?"
"I want your advice, old fellow;" and then he read to Waller certain
portions of a letter from Sybil, impressing upon him the necessity
for silence on their now unsupported claims.
"Your sister is right, Denzil, and advises you like a sensible girl,"
said Waller, after a pause, during which he had been thoughtfully
filling his pipe with cavendish; "neither here nor at home--here most
especially--can you prove anything. The important papers seem to be
lost irretrievably; that lawyer fellow, with the name so consonant to
his trade, Sharkley, has failed in the matter; so be, as your sister
advises, a Devereaux till you can, if ever, announce yourself with
strength, a Trevelyan; and have no quarrels--she seems very sensitive
about that--with your kinsman on Trecarrell's staff; for meanwhile we
may have the Afghans, the Ghilzies, the Kussilbashes, and the devil
knows how many more darkies to fight."
Both Waller and Polwhele were unusually good-looking fellows of that
peculiar style to be found in the British service, and in no other in
Europe. In years they were not more than six or seven-and-twenty;
and the former had attained his company after eight years' service in
India.
His stature verged on six feet; his features were perfectly regular
and aquiline; he had fair hair, which he parted in the middle with an
amount of care only equalled by that adopted in curling his long,
fair whiskers. He had very white teeth, and merry, roguish blue
eyes. He possessed a singular aptitude for making himself
essentially useful and agreeable to the married ladies, who consulted
him on all manner of things, for Waller excelled in everything, from
driving a four-in-hand drag to making a pig out of an orange at
supper. He shone in amateur theatricals; wrote verses (not always
his own composition) in albums; took charge of the band; got up all
the parties and picnics about the station, and even the balls at the
Residency, if such they could be called, in a European circle so
excessively limited, as that of our garrison at Cabul.
Jack Polwhele was perhaps the more soldier-like of the two; he was
fully an inch less in stature than Waller, taper-waisted and
broad-chested; to his weather-beaten face, dark complexion, and
sparkling eyes of the clearest hazel, a pair of black eyebrows, and a
heavy mustache of the same tint, imparted a great deal of character;
and being closely shaven, the contour of a chin indicative of
decision--a virtue essentially military--was fully displayed. He had
a smarter, perhaps more dashing, air than Waller; but like him
exhibited a set of teeth, unique for whiteness and regularity, when
he laughed, which he always did heartily, for like most young
officers, he was a happy and heedless fellow.
He and Waller were rather considered to be two "pattern officers" of
the Cornish Light Infantry, a corps which carries on its colours all
the honours of the old war that began on the plains of Corunna and
ended on those of Waterloo; and to these are added the glories of
India down to the battle of Goojerat and the terrible siege of
Lucknow.
Raised in 1702, in the days of the Good Queen Anne, it has served in
every war that added honour or territory to the British Empire, and
numbers among its Colonels sturdy old Brigadier Jacob Borr, who,
before the capture of Barcelona in 1705, during the strife of the
Spanish Succession, in a dispute about precedence, fought a duel in
front of the British lines, sword in hand, in his Ramillies wig and
lace ruffles, with Colonel Rodney of the Marines, whom he ran fairly
through the body; Brigadier Thomas Paget of the House of Uxbridge;
the ferocious old John Huske, who did such butcherly things at
Culloden; Lieutenant-General Leighton of Watlesborough; William
Amherst, who was Governor of Newfoundland during the American War of
Independence; Ralph Earl of Rosse, and others, down to General
Trecarrel, to whom Sir John Keane presented the watch already
referred to, subsequent to the storming of Ghuznee, where "Old Tre,"
as the soldiers named him, was the second man through the Cabul gate,
after Colonel Peat had blown it up, by three hundred pounds of
gunpowder.
The conversation of those with whom Denzil now found himself, will
best explain the state of affairs in Cabul, and the new phase of
society in which Destiny had cast him.