Читать книгу The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection - George Fraser MacDonald - Страница 20

Any excitement that the affair at Mogala might have caused in Kabul when we got back and told our tale was overshadowed by the arrival on the same day of the new army commander, General Elphinstone, my chief and sponsor. I was piqued at the time, for I thought I had done pretty well, and was annoyed to find that no one thought my skirmish with the Gilzais and securing of hostages worth more than a cocked eyebrow and an “Oh, really?”

But looking back I can say that, all unwittingly, Kabul and the army were right to regard Elphy’s arrival as an incident of the greatest significance. It opened a new chapter: it was a prelude to events that rang round the world. Elphy, ably assisted by McNaghten, was about to reach the peak of his career; he was going to produce the most shameful, ridiculous disaster in British military history.

No doubt Thomas Hughes would find it significant that in such a disaster I would emerge with fame, honour, and distinction – all quite unworthily acquired. But you, having followed my progress so far, won’t be surprised at all.

Let me say that when I talk of disasters I speak with authority. I have served at Balaclava, Cawnpore, and Little Big Horn. Name the biggest born fools who wore uniform in the nineteenth century – Cardigan, Sale, Custer, Raglan, Lucan – I knew them all. Think of all the conceivable misfortunes that can arise from combinations of folly, cowardice, and sheer bad luck, and I’ll give you chapter and verse. But I still state unhesitatingly, that for pure, vacillating stupidity, for superb incompetence to command, for ignorance combined with bad judgement – in short, for the true talent for catastrophe – Elphy Bey stood alone. Others abide our question, but Elphy outshines them all as the greatest military idiot of our own or any other day.

Only he could have permitted the First Afghan War and let it develop to such a ruinous defeat. It was not easy: he started with a good army, a secure position, some excellent officers, a disorganised enemy, and repeated opportunities to save the situation. But Elphy, with the touch of true genius, swept aside these obstacles with unerring precision, and out of order wrought complete chaos. We shall not, with luck, look upon his like again.

However, I tell you this not as a preface to a history of the war, but because if you are to judge my career properly, and understand how the bully expelled from Rugby became a hero, you have to know how things were in that extraordinary year of 1841. The story of the war and its beginnings is the background of the picture, although dashing Harry Flashman is the main figure in the foreground.

Elphy came to Kabul, then, and was met with great junketings and packed streets. Sujah welcomed him at the Bala Hissar, the army in the cantonment two miles outside the city paraded for him, the ladies of the garrison made much of him, McNaghten breathed a sigh of relief at seeing Willoughby Cotton’s back, and there was some satisfaction that we had got such a benevolent and popular commander. Only Burnes, it seemed to me on that first day, when I reported to him, did not share the gaiety.

“I suppose it is right to rejoice,” he told me, stroking in his conceited way at his little black moustache. “But, you know, Elphy’s arrival changes nothing. Sujah is no firmer on his throne, and the defences of the cantonment are no better, simply because Elphy turns the light of his countenance on us. Oh, I daresay it will be all right, but it might have been better if Calcutta had sent us a stronger, brisker man.”

I suppose I should have resented this patronising view of my chief a little, but when I saw Elphy Bey later in the day there was no doubt that Burnes was right. In the weeks since I had parted from him in Calcutta – and he had not been in the best of health then – he had gone downhill. There was this wasted, shaky look about him, and he preferred not to walk much; his hand trembled as he shook mine, and the feel of it was of a bundle of dry sticks in a bag. However, he was pleased to see me.

“You have been distinguishing yourself among the Gilzais, Flashman,” he said. “Sir Alexander Burnes tells me you have won hostages of importance; that is excellent news, especially to our friend the Envoy,” and he turned to McNaghten, who was sitting by drinking tea and holding his cup like an old maid.

McNaghten sniffed. “The Gilzais need not concern us very much, I think,” says he. “They are great brigands, of course, but only brigands. I would rather have hostages for the good behaviour of Akbar Khan.”

“Shall we send Mr Flashman to bring some?” says Elphy, smiling at me to show I shouldn’t mind McNaghten’s snub. “He seems to have gifts in that direction.” And he went on to ask for details of my mission, and told me that I must bring young Ilderim Khan to meet him, and generally behaved very civilly to me.

But it was an effort to remember that this frail old gentleman, with his pleasant small talk, was the commander of the army. He was too polite and vague, even in those few minutes, and deferred too much to McNaghten, to inspire confidence as a military leader.

“How would he do, do you think, if there was any trouble with the Afghans?” says Burnes later. “Well, let’s hope we don’t have to find out.”

In the next few weeks, while I was in fairly constant attendance on Elphy, I found myself sharing his hope. It was not just that Elphy was too old and feeble to be much use as an active leader: he was under McNaghten’s thumb from the start, and since McNaghten was determined to believe that all was well, Elphy had to believe it, too. And neither of them got on with Shelton, a rude boor of a man who was Elphy’s second-in-command, and this dissension at the top made for uneasiness and mistrust further down.

If that was not bad enough, the situation of the army made it worse. The cantonment was a poor place for a garrison to be, without proper defences, with its principal stores outside its walls, and some of the principal officers – Burnes himself, for example – quartered two miles away in Kabul City. But if protests were made to McNaghten – and they were, especially by active men like Broadfoot – they were dismissed as “croaking”, and it was pointed out sharply that the army was unlikely to be called on to fight anyway. When this kind of talk gets abroad, there is no confidence, and the soldiers get slack. Which is dangerous anywhere, but especially in a strange country where the natives are unpredictable.

Of course, Elphy pottering about the cantonment and McNaghten with his nose deep in correspondence with Calcutta, saw nothing to indicate that the peaceful situation was an uneasy one. Nor did most of the army, who were ignorantly contemptuous of the Afghans, and had treated the Kabul expedition as a holiday from the first. But some of us did.

A few weeks after Elphy’s arrival Burnes obtained my detachment from the staff because he wanted to make use of my Pushtu and my interest in the country. “Oh dear,” Elphy complained, “Sir Alexander is so busy about everything. He takes my aides away, even, as though I could readily spare them. But there is so much to do, and I am not well enough to be up to it.” But I was not sorry to go; being about Elphy was like being an orderly in a medical ward.

Burnes was keen that I should get about and see as much of the country as I could, improve my command of the language, and become known to as many influential Afghans as possible. He gave me a number of little tasks like the Mogala one – it was carrying messages, really, but it was valuable experience – and I travelled to towns and villages about Kabul, meeting Douranis and Kohistanis and Baruzkis and so on, and “getting the feel of the place”, as Burnes put it.

“Soldiering’s all very well,” he told me, “but the men who make or break the army in a foreign country are we politicals. We meet the men who count, and get to know ’em, and sniff the wind; we’re the eyes and ears – aye, and the tongues. Without us the military are blind, deaf, and dumb.”

So although boors like Shelton sneered at “young pups gadding about the hills playing at niggers”, I listened to Burnes and sniffed the wind. I took Ilderim with me a good deal, and sometimes his Gilzais, too, and they taught me some of the lore of the hills, and the ways of the people – who mattered, and what tribes were better to deal with, and why, and how the Kohistanis were more friendly disposed to us than the Abizai were, and which families were at feud with each other, and how the feeling ran about the Persians and the Russians, and where the best horses could be obtained, and how millet was grown and harvested: all the trivial information which is the small change of a country’s life. I don’t pretend that I became an expert in a few weeks, or that I ever “knew” Afghanistan, but I picked up a little here and there, and began to realise that those who studied the country only from the cantonment at Kabul knew no more about it than you would learn about a strange house if you stayed in one room of it all the time.

But for anyone with eyes to look beyond Kabul the signs were plain to see. There was mischief brewing in the hills, among the wild tribes who didn’t want Shah Sujah for their king, and hated the British bayonets that protected him in his isolation in the Bala Hissar fortress. Rumours grew that Akbar Khan, son of old Dost Mohammed whom we had deposed, had come down out of the Hindu Kush at last and was gathering support among the chiefs; he was the darling of the warrior clans, they said, and presently he would sweep down on Kabul with his hordes, fling Sujah from his throne, and either drive the feringhees back to India or slaughter them all in their cantonment.

It was easy, if you were McNaghten, to scoff at such rumours from your pleasantly furnished office in Kabul; it was something else again to be up on the ridges beyond Jugdulluk or down towards Ghuznee and hear of councils called and messengers riding, of armed assemblies harangued by holy men and signal fires lit along the passes. The covert smiles, the ready assurances, the sight of swaggering Ghazis, armed to the teeth and with nothing apparent to do, the growing sense of unease – it used to make the hairs crawl on my neck.

For don’t mistake me, I did not like this work. Riding with my Gilzais and young Ilderim, I was made welcome enough, and they were infallible eyes and ears – for having eaten the Queen’s salt they were ready to serve her against their own folk if need be – but it was dangerous for all that. Even in native dress, I would meet black looks and veiled threats in some places and hear the British mocked and Akbar’s name acclaimed. As a friend of the Gilzais and a slight celebrity – Ilderim lost no opportunity of announcing me as “Bloody Lance” – I was tolerated, but I knew the toleration might snap at any moment. At first I went about in a continual funk, but after a while one became fatalistic; possibly it came from dealing with people who believe that every man’s fortune is unchangeably written on his forehead.

So the clouds began to gather on the mountains, and in Kabul the British army played cricket and Elphinstone and McNaghten wrote letters to each other remarking how tranquil everything was. The summer wore on, the sentries drowsed in the stifling heat of the cantonment, Burnes yawned and listened idly to my reports, dined me royally and took me off whoring in the bazaar – and one bright day McNaghten got a letter from Calcutta complaining at the cost of keeping our army in Kabul, and looked about for economies to make.

It was unfortunate that he happened, about this time, to be awaiting his promotion and transfer to the Governorship of Bombay; I think the knowledge that he was leaving may have made him careless. At any rate, seeking means of reducing expenditure, he recalled the idea which had appalled General Nott, and decided to cut the Gilzais’ subsidy.

I had just come back to Kabul from a visit to Kandahar garrison, and learned that the Gilzai chiefs had been summoned and told that instead of 8,000 rupees a year for keeping the passes open, they were now to receive 5,000. Ilderim’s fine young face fell when he heard it, and he said:

“There will be trouble, Flashman huzoor. He would have been better offering pork to a Ghazi than cheat the Gilzais of their money.”

He was right, of course: he knew his own people. The Gilzai chiefs smiled cheerfully when McNaghten delivered his decision, bade him good afternoon, and rode quietly out of Kabul – and three days later the munitions convoy from Peshawar was cut to ribbons in the Khoord-Kabul pass by a force of yelling Gilzais and Ghazis who looted the caravan, butchered the drivers, and made off with a couple of tons of powder and ball.

McNaghten was most irritated, but not concerned. With Bombay beckoning he was not going to alarm Calcutta over a skirmish, as he called it.

“The Gilzais must be given a drubbing for kicking up this kind of row,” said he, and hit on another bright idea: he would cut down expense by sending a couple of battalions back to India, and they could take a swipe at the Gilzais on their way home. Two birds with one stone. The only trouble was that his two battalions had to fight damned nearly every inch of the way as far as Gandamack, with the Gilzais potting at them from behind rocks and sweeping down in sudden cavalry charges. This was bad enough, but what made it worse was that our troops fought badly. Even under the command of General Sale – the tall, handsome “Fighting Bob” who used to invite his men to shoot him when they felt mutinous – clearing the passes was a slow, costly process.

I saw some of it, for Burnes sent me on two occasions with messages to Sale from McNaghten, telling him to get on with it.

It was a shocking experience the first time. I set off thinking it was something of a joy-ride, which it was until the last half-mile into Sale’s rearguard, which was George Broadfoot’s camp beyond Jugdulluk. Everything had been peaceful as you please, and I was just thinking how greatly exaggerated had been the reports arriving in Kabul from Sale, when out of a side-nullah came a mounted party of Ghazis, howling like wolves and brandishing their knives.

I just clapped in my spurs, put my head down, and cut along the track as if all the fiends of hell were behind me – which they were. I tumbled into Broadfoot’s camp half-dead with terror, which he fortunately mistook for exhaustion. George had the bad taste to find it all rather funny; he was one of those nerveless clods, and was in the habit of strolling about under the snipers’ fire polishing his spectacles, although his red coat and even redder beard made him a marked man.

He seemed to think everyone else was as unconcerned as he was, too, for he sent me back to Kabul that same night with another note, in which he told Burnes flatly that there wasn’t a hope of keeping the passes open by force; they would have to negotiate with the Gilzais. I backed this up vehemently to Burnes, for although I had had a clear run back to Kabul, it was obvious to me that the Gilzais meant business, and at all the way stations there had been reports of other tribesmen massing in the hills above the passes.

Burnes gave me some rather odd looks as I made my report; he thought I was scared and probably exaggerating. At any rate, he made no protest when McNaghten said Broadfoot was an ass and Sale an incompetent, and that they had better get a move on if they were to have cleared a way to Jallalabad – which was about two-thirds of the way from Kabul to Peshawar – before winter set in. So Sale’s brigade was left to struggle on, and Burnes (who was much preoccupied with the thought of getting McNaghten’s job as Envoy when McNaghten went to Bombay) wrote that the country was “in the main very tranquil”. Well, he paid for his folly.

A week or two later – it was now well into October – he sent me off again with a letter to Sale. Little progress was being made in clearing the passes, the Gilzais were as active as ever and out-shooting our troops all the time, and there were growing rumours of trouble brewing in Kabul itself. Burnes had sense enough to show a little concern, although McNaghten was still as placidly blind as ever, while Elphy Bey simply looked from one to the other, nodding agreement to whatever was said. But even Burnes showed no real urgency about it all; he just wanted to nag at Sale for not keeping the Gilzais quiet.

This time I went with a good escort of my Gilzais, under young Ilderim, on the theory that while they were technically sworn to fight their own kinsfolk, they would be unlikely in practice to get into any shooting scrapes with them. However, I never put this to the test, for it became evident as we rode eastward through the passes that the situation was worse than anyone in Kabul had realised, and I decided that I, at any rate, would not try to get through to Sale. The whole country beyond Jugdulluk was up, and the hills were swarming with hostile Afghans, all either on their way to help beat up Sale’s force, or else preparing for something bigger – there was talk among the villagers of a great jehad or holy war, in which the feringhees would be wiped out; it was on the eve of breaking out, they said. Sale was now hopelessly cut off; there was no chance of relief from Jallalabad, or even from Kabul – oh, Kabul was going to be busy enough looking after itself.

I heard this shivering round a camp-fire on the Soorkab road, and Ilderim shook his head in the shadows and said:

“It is not safe for you to go on, Flashman huzoor. You must return to Kabul. Give me the letter for Sale; although I have eaten the Queen’s salt my own people will let me through.”

This was such obvious common sense that I gave him the letter without argument and started back for Kabul that same night, with four of the Gilzai hostages for company. At that hour I wanted to get as many miles as possible between me and the gathering Afghan tribes, but if I had known what was waiting for me in Kabul I would have gone on to Sale and thought myself lucky.

Riding hard through the next day, we came to Kabul at nightfall, and I never saw the place so quiet. Bala Hissar loomed over the deserted streets; the few folk who were about were grouped in little knots in doorways and at street corners; there was an air of doom over the whole place. No British soldiers were to be seen in the city itself, and I was glad to get to the Residency, where Burnes lived in the heart of the town, and hear the courtyard gates grind to behind me. The armed men of Burnes’s personal guard were standing to in the yard, while others were posted on the Residency walls; the torches shone on belt-plates and bayonets, and the place looked as though it was getting ready to withstand a siege.

But Burnes himself was sitting reading in his study as cool as a minnow, until he saw me. At the sight of my evident haste and disorder – I was in Afghan dress, and pretty filthy after days in the saddle – he started up.

“What the deuce are you doing here?” says he.

I told him, and added that there would probably be an Afghan army coming to support my story.

“My message to Sale,” he snapped. “Where is it? Have you not delivered it?”

I told him about Ilderim, and for once the dapper little dandy forgot his carefully cultivated calm.

“Good God!” says he. “You’ve given it to a Gilzai to deliver?”

“A friendly Gilzai,” I assured him. “A hostage, you remember.”

“Are you mad?” says he, his little moustache all a-quiver. “Don’t you know that you can’t trust an Afghan, hostage or not?”

“Ilderim is a khan’s son and a gentleman in his own way,” I told him. “In any event, it was that or nothing. I couldn’t have got through.”

“And why not? You speak Pushtu; you’re in native dress – God knows you’re dirty enough to pass. It was your duty to see that message into Sale’s own hand – and bring an answer. My God, Flashman, this is a pretty business, when a British officer cannot be trusted …”

“Now, look you here, Sekundar,” says I, but he came up straight like a little bantam and cut me off.

“Sir Alexander, if you please,” says he icily, as though I’d never seen him with his breeches down, chasing after some big Afghan bint. He stared at me and took a pace or two round the table.

“I think I understand,” says he. “I have wondered about you lately, Flashman – whether you were to be fully relied on, or … Well, it shall be for a court-martial to decide—”

“Court-martial? What the devil!”

“For wilful disobedience of orders,” says he. “There may be other charges. In any event, you may consider yourself under arrest, and confined to this house. We are all confined anyway – the Afghans are allowing no one to pass between here and the cantonment.”

“Well, in God’s name, doesn’t that bear out what I’ve been telling you?” I said. “The country’s all up to the eastward, man, and now here in Kabul …”

“There is no rising in Kabul,” says he. “Merely a little unrest which I propose to deal with in the morning.” He stood there, cock-sure little ass, in his carefully pressed linen suit, with a flower in his button-hole, talking as though he was a schoolmaster promising to reprimand some unruly fags. “It may interest you to know – you who turn tail at rumours – that I have twice this evening received direct threats to my life. I shall not be alive by morning, it is said. Well, well, we shall see about that.”

“Aye, maybe you will,” says I. “And as to your fine talk that I turn tail at rumours, you may see about that, too. Maybe Akbar Khan will come to show you himself.”

He smiled at me, not pleasantly. “He is in Kabul; I have even had a message from him. And I am confident that he intends no harm to us. A few dissidents there are, of course, and it may be necessary to read them a lesson. However, I trust myself for that.”

There was no arguing with his complacency, but I pitched into him hard on his threat of a court-martial for me. You might have thought that any sensible man would have understood my case, but he simply waved my protests aside, and finished by ordering me to my room. So I went, in a rare rage at the self-sufficient folly of the man, and heartily hoping that he would trip over his own conceit. Always so clever, always so sure – that was Burnes. I would have given a pension to see him at a loss for once.

But I was to see it for nothing.

It came suddenly, just before breakfast-time, when I was rubbing my eyes after a pretty sleepless night which had dragged itself away very slowly, and very silently for Kabul. It was a grey morning, and the cocks were crowing; suddenly I became aware of a distant murmur, growing to a rumble, and hurried to the window. The town lay still, with a little haze over the houses; the guards were still on the wall of the Residency compound, and in the distance, coming closer, the noise was identifiable as the tramping of feet and the growing clamour of a mob.

There was a shouted order in the courtyard, a clatter of feet on the stairs, and Burnes’s voice calling for his brother, young Charlie, who lived in the Residency with him. I snatched my robe from its peg and hurried down, winding my puggaree on to my head as I went. As I reached the courtyard there was the crack of a musket shot, and a wild yell from beyond the wall; a volley of blows hammered on the gate, and across the top of the wall I saw the vanguard of a charging horde streaming out from between the nearest houses. Bearded faces, flashing knives, they surged up to the wall and fell back, yelling and cursing, while the guards thrust at them with their musket butts. For a moment I thought they would charge again and sweep irresistibly over the wall, but they hung back, a jostling, shrieking crowd, shaking their fists and weapons, while the guardsmen lining the wall looked anxiously back for orders and kept their thumbs poised on their musket-locks.

Burnes strolled out of the front door and stood in full view at the top of the steps. He was as fresh and calm as a squire taking his first sniff of the morning, but at the sight of him the mob redoubled its clamour and rolled up to the wall, yelling threats and insults while he looked right and left at them, smiling and shaking his head.

“No shooting, havildar,” says he to the guard commander. “It will all quieten down in a moment.”

“Death to Sekundar!” yelled the mob. “Death to the feringhee pig!”

Jim Broadfoot, who was George’s younger brother, and little Charlie Burnes, were at Sekundar’s elbow, both looking mighty anxious, but Burnes himself never lost his poise. Suddenly he raised his hand, and the mob beyond the wall fell quiet; he grinned at that, and touched his moustache in that little, confident gesture he had, and then he began to talk to them in Pushtu. His voice was quiet, and must have carried only faintly to them, but they listened for a little as he coolly told them to go home, and stop this folly, and reminded them that he had always been their friend and had done them no harm.

It might have succeeded, for he had the gift of the gab, but show-off that he was, he carried it just too far, and patronised them, and first there were murmurs, and then the clamour swelled up again, more savage than before. Suddenly one Afghan started forward and hurled himself on to the wall, knocking down a sentry; the nearest guard drove at the Afghan with his bayonet, someone in the crowd fired his jezzail, and with one hellish roar the whole mob swept forward, scrambling up the wall.

The havildar yelled an order, there was the ragged crash of a volley, and the courtyard was full of struggling men, crazy Afghans with their knives hacking and the guard falling back, stabbing with their bayonets and going down beneath the rush. There was no holding them; I saw Broadfoot grab Burnes and hustle him inside the house, and a moment later I was inside myself, slamming the side door in the face of a yelling Ghazi with a dozen of his fellows bounding at his heels.

It was a stout door, thank God, like the others in the Residency; otherwise we should all have been butchered within five minutes. Blows shattered on the far side of it as I slipped the bar home, and as I hurried along the passage to the main hallway I could hear, above the shrieking and shooting outside, the crash and thud of countless fists and hilts on panels and shutters – it was like being inside a box with demented demons pounding on the lid. Suddenly above the din there was the crash of an ordered volley from the courtyard, and then another, and as the yelling subsided momentarily the havildar’s voice could be heard urging the remnant of the guard into the house. Little bloody odds it would make, I thought; they had us cornered, and it was a case of having our throats cut now or later.

Burnes and the others were in the hallway, and Sekundar as usual was showing off, affecting carelessness in a tight spot.

“Wake Duncan with thy knocking,” he quoted, cocking his head on one side at the pounding of the mob. “How many of the guard are inside, Jim?”

Broadfoot said about a dozen, and Burnes said: “That’s splendid. That makes, let’s see, twelve, and the servants, and us three – hullo, here’s Flashman! Mornin’ Flash; sleep well? Apologise for this rude awakening – about twenty-five, I’d say; twenty fighting men, anyway.”

“Few enough,” says Broadfoot, examining his pistols. “The niggers’ll be inside before long – we can’t cover every door and window, Sekundar.”

A musket ball crashed through a shutter and knocked a cloud of plaster off the opposite wall. Everyone ducked, except Burnes.

“Nonsense!” says he. “Can’t cover ’em from down here, I grant you, but we don’t have to. Now Jim, take the guard, all of ’em, upstairs, and have ’em shoot down from the balconies. That’ll clear these mad fellows away from the sides of the house. There ain’t many guns among them, I fancy, so you can get a good sight of them without fear of being hit – much. Up you go, laddie, look sharp!”

Broadfoot clattered away, and a moment later the red-coated jawans were mounting the stairs, with Burnes shouting “Shabash!” to encourage them while he belted his sword over his suit and stuck a pistol in his belt. He seemed positively to be enjoying himself, the bloody ass. He clapped me on the shoulder and asked didn’t I just wish I’d galloped on to Sale after all – but never a word of acknowledgement that my warning had proved correct. I reminded him of it, and pointed out that if he had listened then, we shouldn’t be going to get our throats cut now, but he just laughed and straightened his button-hole.

“Don’t croak so, Flashy,” says he. “I could hold this house with two men and a whore’s protector.” There was a sound of ragged firing over our heads. “You see? Jim’s setting about ’em already. Come on, Charlie, let’s see the fun!” And he and his brother hurried upstairs, leaving me alone in the hall.

“What about my bloody court-martial?” I shouted after him, but he never heard.

Well, his plan worked, at first. Broadfoot’s men did clear away the rascals from round the walls, shooting down from the upper windows and balcony, and when I joined them on the upper floor there were about twenty Ghazi corpses in the courtyard. A few shots came the other way, and one of the jawans was wounded in the thigh, but the main mob had now retreated to the street, and contented themselves with howling curses from the cover of the wall.

“Excellent! Bahut achha!” said Burnes, puffing a cheroot and peering out of the window. “You see, Charlie, they’ve drawn off, and presently Elphy will be wondering down in the cantonment what all the row’s about, and send someone to see.”

“Won’t he send troops, then?” says little Charlie.

“Of course. A battalion, probably – that’s what I’d send. Since it’s Elphy, though, he’s as likely to send a brigade, eh, Jim?”

Broadfoot, squatting at the other window, peered along his pistol barrel, fired, swore, and said: “So long as he sends someone.”

“Don’t you fret,” says Burnes. “Here, Flashy, have a cheroot. Then you can try your hand at potting off some of these chaps beyond the wall. I’d say Elphy’ll be on the move inside two hours, and we’ll be out of here in three. Good shot, Jim! That’s the style!”

Burnes was wrong, of course. Elphy didn’t send troops; indeed, so far as I’ve been able to learn, he did nothing at all. If even a platoon had arrived in that first hour, I believe the mob would have melted before them; as it was, they began to pluck up courage, and started clambering the wall again, and sneaking round to the rear, where the stables gave them cover. We kept up a good fire from the windows – I shot three myself, including an enormously fat man, at which Burnes said: “Choose the thin ones, Flashy; that chap couldn’t have got in the front door anyway.” But as two hours passed he joked rather less, and actually made another attempt to talk to our attackers from the balcony, but they drove him inside with a shot or two and a volley of missiles.

Meanwhile, some of the Ghazis had set fire to the stables, and the smoke began to drift into the house. Burnes swore, and we all strained our eyes peering across the rooftops towards the cantonment, but still no sign of help appeared, and I felt the pumping of fear again in my throat. The howling of the mob had risen again, louder than ever, some of the jawans were looking scared, and even Burnes was frowning.

“Blast Elphy Bey,” says he. “He’s cutting it dooced fine. And I believe these brutes have got muskets from somewhere at last – listen.” He was right; there were as many shots coming from outside as from inside the house. They were smacking into the walls and knocking splinters from the shutters, and presently another jawan gave a yelp and staggered back into the room with his shoulder smashed and blood pouring down his shirt.

“Hm,” says Burnes, “this is gettin’ warm. Like Montrose at the Fair, eh, Charlie?” Charlie gave him the ghost of a smile; he was scared stiff and trying not to show it.

“How many rounds have you got, Flashy?” says Burnes. I had only six left, and Charlie had none; the ten jawans had barely forty among them.

“How about you, Jim?” shouts Burnes to Broadfoot, who was at the far window. Broadfoot shouted something back, but in the din I didn’t catch it, and then Broadfoot stood slowly up, and turned towards us, looking down at his shirt-front. I saw a red spot there, and suddenly it grew to a great red stain, and Broadfoot took two steps back and went head first over the window sill. There was a sickening crash as he hit the courtyard, and a tremendous shriek from the mob; the firing seemed to redouble, and from the rear, where the smoke of the burning stables was pouring in on us, came the measured smashing of a ram at the back door.

Burnes fired from his window, and ducked away. He squatted down near me, spun his pistol by the guard, whistled for a second or two through his teeth, and then said: “Charlie, Flashy, I think it’s time to go.”

“Where the hell to?” says I.

“Out of here,” says he. “Charlie, cut along to my room; you’ll find native robes in the wardrobe. Bring ’em along. Lively, now.” When Charlie had gone, he said to me “It’s not much of a chance, but it’s all we have, I think. We’ll try it at the back door; the smoke looks pretty thick, don’t you know, and with all the confusion we might get clear away. Ah, good boy, Charlie. Now send the havildar across to me.”

While Burnes and Charlie struggled into their gowns and puggarees, Burnes talked to the havildar, who agreed that the mob probably wouldn’t hurt him and his men, not being feringhees, but would concentrate on looting the place.

“But you, sahib, they will surely kill,” he said. “Go while ye can, and God go with you.”

“And remain with you and yours,” says Burnes, shaking his hand. “Shabash and salaam, havildar. All ready, Flash? Come on, Charlie.”

And with Burnes in the lead and myself last, we cut out down the staircase, across the hall, and through the passage towards the kitchen. From the back door, out of sight to our right, there came a crackling of breaking timber; I took a quick glance through a loophole, and saw the garden almost alive with Ghazis.

“Just about in time,” says Burnes, as we reached the kitchen door. I knew it led into a little fenced-off pen, where the swill-tubs were kept; once we got into that, and provided we weren’t actually seen leaving the house, we stood a fair chance of getting away.

Burnes slipped the bar quietly from the door, and opened it a crack.

“Luck of the devil!” says he. “Come on, juldi!”

We slipped out after him; the pen was empty. It consisted of two high screen walls running from either side of the door; there was no one in sight through the opening at the other end, and the smoke was billowing down in great clouds now, with the mob kicking up the most hellish din on either side of us.

“Pull her to, Flashy!” snapped Burnes, and I shut the door behind us. “That’s it – now, try to batter the damned thing down!” And he jumped at the closed door, hammering with his fists. “Open, unbelieving swine!” he bawled. “Feringhee pigs, your hour has come! This way, brothers! Death to the bastard Sekundar!”

Seeing his plan, we hammered along with him, and presently round the end of the pen came a handful of Ghazis to see what was what. All they saw, of course, was three of the Faithful trying to break down a door, so they joined in, and after a moment we left off, Burnes cursing like blazes, and went out of the pen, ostensibly to seek another entrance to hammer at.

There were Afghans all over the garden and round the burning stables; most of them, it seemed to me, were just berserk and running about and yelling for no particular reason, waving their knives and spears, and presently there was a tremendous howl and a crash as the back door caved in, and a general move in that direction. The three of us kept going for the stable gate, past the burning building; it was a creepy feeling, hurrying through the confused crowd of our enemies, and I was in dread that little Charlie, who was new to native dress, and not nearly as dark as Burnes and I, would do something to be spotted. But he kept his hood well forward over his face, and we got outside the gate in safety, where the hangers-on were congregated, yelling and laughing as they watched the Residency, hoping no doubt to see the bodies of the hated feringhees launched from the upper windows.

“May dogs defile the grave of the swine Burnes!” roared Sekundar, spitting towards the Residency, and the bystanders gave him a cheer. “So far, so good,” he added to me. “Now shall we stroll down to the cantonments and have a word with Elphy? Ready, Charlie? Best foot foward, then, and try to swagger like a regular badmash. Take your cue from Flashy here; ain’t he the ugliest-lookin’ Bashie-Bazouk you ever saw?”

With Burnes in the lead we pushed out boldly into the street, Sekundar thrusting aside the stragglers who got in the way like any Yusufzai bully; I wanted to tell him to go easy, for it seemed to me he must attract attention, and his face was all too familiar to the Kabulis. But they gave way before him, with a curse or two, and we won clear to the end of the street without being spotted; now, thought I, we’re home in a canter. The crowd was still fairly thick, but not so noisy, and every stride was taking us nearer the point where, at worst, we could cut and run for it towards the cantonment.

And then Burnes, the over-confident fool, ruined the whole thing.

We had reached the end of the street, and he must pause to yell another curse against the feringhees, by way of a final brag: I could imagine him showing off later to the garrison wives, telling them how he’d fooled the Afghans by roaring threats against himself. But he overdid it; having called himself the grandson of seventy pariah dogs at the top of his voice, he muttered something in an undertone to Charlie, and laughed at his own witticism.

The trouble is, an Afghan doesn’t laugh like an Englishman. He giggles high-pitched, but Burnes guffawed. I saw a head turn to stare at us, and grabbing Burnes by one arm and Charlie by the other I was starting to hurry them down the street when I was pushed aside and a big brute of a Ghazi swung Burnes round by the shoulder and peered at him.

“Jao, hubshi!” snarled Burnes, and hit his hand aside, but the fellow still stared, and then suddenly shouted:

“Mashallah! Brothers, it is Sekundar Burnes!”

There was an instant’s quiet, and then an almighty yell. The big Ghazi whipped out his Khyber knife, Burnes locked his arm and snapped it before he could strike, but then about a dozen others were rushing in on us. One jumped at me, and I hit him so hard with my fist that I overbalanced; I jumped up, clawing for my own sword, and saw Burnes throwing off the wounded Ghazi and shouting:

“Run, Charlie, run!”

There was a side-alley into which Charlie, who was nearest, might have escaped, but he hesitated, standing white-faced, while Burnes jumped between him and the charging Afghans. Sekundar had his Khyber knife out now; he parried a blow from the leader, closed with him, and shouted again:

“Get out, Charlie! Cut, man!”

And then, as Charlie still hesitated, petrified, Burnes yelled in an agonised voice:

“Run, baby, please! Run!”

They were the last words he spoke. A Khyber knife swept down on his shoulder and he reeled back, blood spouting; then the mob was on top of him, hacking and striking. He must have taken half a dozen mortal cuts before he even hit the ground. Charlie gave a frenzied cry, and ran towards him; they cut him down before he had gone three steps.

I saw all this, because it happened in seconds; then I had my own hands full. I jumped over the man I had hit and dived for the alley, but a Ghazi was there first, screaming and slashing at me. I had my own sword out, and turned his cut, but the way was blocked and the mob was howling at my heels. I turned, slashing frantically, and they gave back an instant; I got my back to the nearest wall as they surged in again, the knives flashed before my eyes. I thrust at the snarling faces and heard the screams and curses. And then something hit me a dreadful blow in the stomach and I went down before the rush of bodies; a foot stamped on my hip, and even as I thought, oh, sweet Jesus, this is death, I had one fleeting memory of being trampled in the scrimmage in the Schoolhouse match. Something smashed against my head, and I waited for the horrible bite of sharp steel. And then I remember nothing more.¹⁴