proposal that the women and children who were with the army should be handed over to his custody, to be conveyed by him in safety to Peshawur. There was nothing better to be done. The only modification of his request, or command, that could be obtained was that the husbands of the married ladies should accompany their wives. With this agreement the women and children were handed over to the care of this dreaded enemy, and Lady Macnaghten had to undergo the agony of a personal interview with the man whose own hand had killed her husband. Few scenes in poetry or romance can surely be more thrilling with emotion than such a meeting as this must have been. Akbar Khan was kindly in his language, and declared to the unhappy widow that he would give his right arm to undo, if it were possible, the deed that he had done. 8. The women and children and the married men whose wives were among this party were taken from the unfortunate army and placed under the care of Akbar Khan. As events turned out, this proved a fortunate thing for them. But in any case it was the best thing that could be done. Not one of these women and children could have lived through the horrors of the journey which lay before the remnant of what had once been a British force. 9. The march was resumed; new horrors set in; new heaps of corpses stained the snow; and then Abkar Khan presented himself with a fresh proposition. In the treaty made at Cabul between the English authorities and the Afghan chiefs there was an article which stipulated that "the English force at Jellalabad shall march for Peshawur before the Cabul army arrives, and shall not delay on the road." Akbar Khan was especially anxious to get rid of the little army at Jellalabad at the near end of the Khyber Pass. He desired above all things that it should be on the march home to India; either that it might be out of his way, or that he might have a chance of destroying it on its way. 10. It was in great measure as a security for its moving that he desired to have the women and children under his care. It is not likely that he meant any harm to the women and children; it must be remembered that his father and many of the women of his family were under the control of the British Government as prisoners in Hindostan. But he fancied that if he had the English women in his hands the army at Jellalabad could not refuse to obey the condition set down in the article of the treaty. 11. Now that he had the women in his power, however, he demanded other guarantees with openly acknowledged purpose of keeping these latter until Jellalabad should have been 'evacuated. He demanded that General Elphinstone, the commander, with his second in command, and also one other officer, should hand themselves over to him as hostages. He promised if this were done to exert himself more than before to restrain the fanatical tribes, and to provide the army in the Koord Cabul Pass with provisions. There was nothing for it but to submit; and the English general himself became, with the women and children, a captive in the hands of the 'inexorable enemy. 12. Then the march of the army, without a general, went on again. Soon it became the story of a general without an army; before very long there was neither general nor army. It is idle to lengthen a tale of mere horrors. The straggling remnant of an army entered the Jugdulluk Passa dark, steep, narrow, ascending path between crags. The miserable toilers found that the fanatical, implacable tribes had barricaded the pass. All was over. The army of Cabul was finally extinguished in that barricaded pass. It was a trap; the British were taken in it. A few mere fugitives escaped from the scene of actual slaughter, and were on the road to Jellalabad, where Sale and his little army were holding their own. 13. When they were within sixteen miles of Jellalabad the number was reduced to six. Of these six, five were killed by straggling 'marauders on the way. One man alone reached Jellalabad to tell the tale. Literally one man, Dr. Brydon, came to Jellalabad out of a moving host which had numbered in all some sixteen thousand when it set out on its march. The curious eye will search through history or fiction in vain for any picture more thrilling with the suggestions of an awful catastrophe than that of this solitary survivor, faint and reeling on his jaded horse, as he appeared under the walls of Jellalabad, to bear the tidings of our Thermopyle of pain and shame. [This is the crisis of the story. General Sale declined to quit Jellalabad, and was besieged there by Akbar Khan. As soon as Sale learned that General Pollock was forcing the Khyber Pass to relieve him, he attacked the Afghans and completely defeated them. Pollock then marched swiftly on Cabul and destroyed its fortifications, after having rescued Lady Sale and the other hostages.] JUSTIN M'CARTHY: A History of Our Own Times. bar-ri-cad-ed, fortified roughly; ob- | ig-no-min-ious, shameful. in-ex-o-ra-ble, unyielding; pitiless. mod-1-fi-ca-tion, reduction; change. par-a-lyzed, unnerved. 3 Ghil/zyes, one of the hill tribes that infest the mountains between India and Afghanistan. 4 Peshaw'ur, the town in India nearest to the Khyber Pass; 40 miles west of Attock on the Indus. 5 Jugdulluk' Pass; between the Koord Cabul Pass and Jellalabad. It is 5,300 feet above sea-level. 17. THE TURNING-POINT AT THE ALMA. SEPTEMBER 20, 1854. [England and France became the allies of Turkey against Russia in the beginning of 1854, and the Crimean War began. The object of the expedition was to attack Sebastopol, the great Russian stronghold. The allies landed at Eupatoria, on the west coast of the Crimea, on September 14th. A week later they reached the river Alma, and found fifty thousand Russians under Prince Menschikoff posted on the rocky heights of its south bank, and prepared to dispute their passage. The battle was hotly contested Not till after three hours' hard fighting did the allies succeed in forcing the passage of the river. Then the scaling of the southern heights was commenced. After giving orders for the general advance, Lord Raglan, accompanied only by his staff, rode across the Alma at a point between the English and the French armies, mounted the opposite slope, and took up his position on a knoll far in advance of either of the allied armies, and in the very heart of the enemy's position. From this spot he commanded a view of nearly the whole ground destined to be the scene of the English attack. The writer was beside Lord Raglan on the knoll.] 1. LORD RAGLAN1 looked upon that part of the Russian army which confronted ours; he saw it in profile; he saw down into the flank of the Causeway batteries, which barred the mouth of the pass; and, beyond, he saw into the shoulder of the Great Redoubt, then about to be stormed by Codrington's brigade. Above all, he saw, drawn up with splendid precision, the bodies of infantry which the enemy held in reserve. They were massed in two columns. The formation of each mass looked close and perfect, as though it had been made of marble and cut by rule and plumb-line. 2. These troops, being in reserve, were of course some way in rear of the enemy's batteries and his foremost 'battalions, but they were only nine hundred yards from the eye of the English general; for it was Lord Raglan's strange and happy destiny to have ridden almost into the rear of the positions, and to be almost as near to the enemy's reserves as he was to the front of their array. 3. All this- -now told with labour of words-Lord Raglan saw at a glance; and at the same moment he divined the fatal perturbation which would be inflicted upon the enemy by the mere appearance of our headquarter staff in this part of the field. The knoll, though much lower than the summit of the telegraph height, stood out bold and plain without having thousands of troops close at hand. The enemy's generals would therefore in fer that a large pro portion of the allied force had won its way into the heart of the Russian position. |