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Updated: May 25, 2025
The Afridis could not bring themselves to rush the little party, but confined themselves to keeping up a heavy fire. Another Sikh was wounded; and the dust caused by the bullets almost blinded the others, who could scarcely see to reply. At last, just in the nick of time, a relieving party arrived and carried them off.
I saw sixty or seventy of them turn down, but I should have passed them by and continued in pursuit of the main body had not one of my scouts come rustling up to inform me that the smaller ravine was a cul-de-sac, and that the Afridis who had gone up it had no possible means of getting out again except by cutting their way through our ranks.
Some of them, passing along the hill, shouted to him to join them; but with a wave of his rifle and a gesture, showing that he intended to keep to the track, he went on. Late in the afternoon, on mounting a high pass, he could distinctly hear firing in the distance; and his heart beat at the thought that he was near his friends. Still, between him and them the Afridis might be swarming.
An officer of the Guides Infantry, of long experience and considerable distinction, who commands both Sikhs and Afridis, and has led both many times in action, writes as follows: "Personally, I don't blame any Afridis who desert to go and defend their own country, now that we have invaded it, and I think it is only natural and proper that they should want to do so."
The peasantry now brought in ample supplies of provisions, and on the 16th of April the relieving force under General Pollock, having gallantly fought its way through the Khyber Pass, routing the Afridis who guarded it, approached the long beleaguered city, an exploit second to none in the annals of warfare; and thus was accomplished the successful defence of Jellalabad.
This ground has a special interest for me, because it is the scene of my first campaign. There is the pass opposite Kalabagh and the Thul valley, where I was engaged during the summer of 1841 in protecting the convoys and keeping the Afridis in order. It wasn't a sinecure, I promise you."
He brought an offer that, if the Afridis were allowed to carry off their dead and wounded, they would be content that the same tribute as of old should be paid; and to take oath that it should not, in the future, be increased. The chief agreed to the terms, on condition that only twenty men should be allowed to pass the hedge, and that they should there hand over the dead to their companions.
The Ameer, Abdur Rahman, irritated by the making of the Khojak tunnel, was soothed by Sir Mortimer Durand's Mission in 1893; and in return for an increase of subsidy and other advantages, he agreed that the tribes of the debatable borderland the Waziris, Afridis, and those of the Swat and Chitral valleys should be under the control of the Viceroy.
But these people were as they were in Burma, or as the Afridis are. They shot at their pleasure, and when pressed hid the gun and exhibited purwanas, or lay in a house and said they were farmers. Even such farmers as cut up the Madras troops at Hlinedatalone in Burma! Even such farmers as slew Cavagnari Sahib and the Guides at Kabul!
Waiting until he saw where the Afridis were thickest, he made his way down to the firing line, and took up his position behind a rock; there being none of the natives within fifty yards of him. He now began to fire, taking pains to see that his bullets went far over the heads of the British.
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