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The English commander of Attock trusted to the strength of the forts standing some 800 feet above the river, and imagined the Russians to be still far away. The Russian vanguard had crossed the river Cabul, which joins the Indus at Attock, at a point a few miles above the city, and thus appeared simultaneously with General Blood's troops before the fortress.
A cut-glass lantern and the label of a bottle of cherry-brandy in particular, seemed to them the very essence of the rare and curious, and they seemed never tired of admiring them. After breakfast we again took the road, and marched three kos to another little wooded settlement, called Nurila, situated, like Kulchee, upon the Indus, or, as it is here called, the Attock.
But Strickland was not proud, though he had helped once, at Jagadhri, at the Painting of the Death Bull, which no Englishman must even look upon; had mastered the thieves'-patter of the changars; had taken a Eusufzai horse-thief alone near Attock; and had stood under the mimbar-board of a Border mosque and conducted service in the manner of a Sunni Mollah.
The movements of the Russian army had upset the plan of the English generals. The English corps which had collected at Mooltan were quickly pushed on to Lahore, as soon as the Russians' intention to proceed to the south-east became clear. The time which General Ivanov required for concentrating his troops at Attock rendered it possible for the English to reach Lahore.
The distance is five hundred and eighty miles, and the time taken was twenty-six days and fourteen hours; but from this must be deducted five days and nine hours made up as follows: detained forty-two hours at Attock, holding the fort pending the arrival of a reliable garrison; detained forty-one hours at Rawul Pindi, pending the question as to whether the Guides were to be employed to disarm the native artillery; detained forty-six hours at Karnal by the magistrate, in order to attack, capture, and burn a hostile village lying twelve miles off the road.
But King Ali Mardan said such a treasure was more than any man's life was worth, since it must bring envy and battle and murder to its possessor; so when he went to Attock he threw the magical Snake-stone into the river, lest it should bring strife into the world.
The first night's march took the Guides sixteen miles to Nowshera, where after barely two hours' rest came orders to push on to Attock, another eighteen miles. To add to the hardships of this march, it so chanced that the Mahomedan fast of Ramzan was in observance, during which no follower of the Prophet may eat or drink between sunrise and sunset.
It is also worthy of remark, that as Darius, before the voyage of Scylax, was master of the Attock, Peukeli, and Multan, he needed no information respecting the route to India, as every conqueror has followed this very obvious and easy route. Dr.
Having breathed deeply he again sank, to re-appear at a point still more distant, and be lost in the gathering gloom. "He is off to Cabul to lay his case before the Amir," observed the elderly Arab with grim humour. "Doubtless," agreed the Leading Gentleman, "he will swim the 2000 miles to India, and then up the Indus to Attock."
Parched, hungry, and weary, the thirty-four mile march was completed, and the Indus crossed at ten in the morning of the 14th of May. Halting by order forty-two hours at Attock, to allow of the arrival of a relief garrison, the Guides pushed on thirty-two miles to Burhan, on the night of the 15th 16th, in the midst of a violent dust storm.
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