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Pollock determined to 'set a mark' on Cabul to commemorate the retribution which the British had exacted. He spared the Balla Hissar, and abstained from laying the city in ruins, contenting himself with the destruction of the principal bazaar, through which the heads of Macnaghten and Burnes had been paraded, and in which their mangled bodies had been exposed.
Shelton remained inactive in the Balla Hissar until Campbell was reported beaten and retreating, when he took some feeble measures to cover the retreat of the fugitives, who, however, abandoned their guns outside the fortress.
But the indifference, vacillation and delay of the British authorities greatly encouraged its rapid development. Macnaghten at first 'did not think much of it. Shelton was ordered into the Balla Hissar, countermanded, a second time ordered, and again instructed to halt for orders.
"Hi, Mistis " began Balla, with an air of reproach; but she cut him short and kept on. "I want you all to know it." She was speaking now so as to be heard by the cook and the maids who were standing about the yard listening to her. "I want you all to know it every one on the place! You can go if you wish; but, if you go, you can never come back!"
To discover, in a nation virtually accessory as a whole after the fact to the slaughter of the mission, the men on whom lay the suspicion of having been the instigators and the perpetrators of the cruel deed, to accord them a fair trial, and to send to the gallows those on whose hands was found the blood of the massacred mission, was held a more befitting and not less telling course of retributive action than to raze the Balla Hissar and sow its site with salt.
Roberts might have been assailed with better chance of success when his force was dispersed between the Siah Sung camp, the Balla Hissar, and Sherpur, than when concentrated in the strong defensive position against which the Afghans beat in vain. Perhaps the rising ripened faster in 1879 than in 1841 because in the former period no Macnaghten fomented intrigues and scattered gold.
There was great excitement at Oakland during the John Brown raid, and the boys' grandmother used to pray for him and Cook, whose pictures were in the papers. The boys became soldiers, and drilled punctiliously with guns which they got Uncle Balla to make for them.
His artisans were skillful enough to turn out in large numbers very fair rifled small-arms, which they copied from British models; and in the Balla Hissar magazine were found by our people vast quantities of gunpowder and of admirable cartridges of local manufacture.
He was on his way to the garden in a very straightforward manner, but the boys made him understand that to bury treasure it was necessary to be particularly secret, and after some little grumbling, Balla humored them.
On the 9th the divisional camp moved forward to the Siah Sung heights, a mile eastward from the Balla Hissar, and there it was joined by Baker, and by Massy, who on his way to camp led his wearied troopers through the city of Cabul without mishap or insult.
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