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I should have fallen into the hands of the murderous Ghazis had it not been for the devotion and courage shown by Murray, my orderly, who threw me across a pack-horse, and succeeded in bringing me safely to the British lines. Worn with pain, and weak from the prolonged hardships which I had undergone, I was removed, with a great train of wounded sufferers, to the base hospital at Peshawar.
Even the white quivering groups of their ghazis forebore to charge with their whetted knives, but clung to a gully which afforded good cover 500 yards away from the British front and right flank; there the Afghan regulars galled the exposed khaki line, while their cannon, now numbering thirty pieces, kept up a fire to which Maclaine's twelve guns could give no adequate reply.
Getting in touch with the enemy, the horse-artillery came into action, but their fire, good and accurate as it might be, was not sufficient to stay the determined advance of large bodies of bloodthirsty and fanatical ghazis. The General, therefore, ordered the cavalry to charge, the two regiments acting independently under their own commanders.
They'll be prodded into facing round in a minute." He looked through his field-glasses, and caught the glint of an officer's sword. "Beating 'em with the flat damned conscripts! How the Ghazis are walking into them!" said he. The Fore and Aft, heading back, bore with them their officers.
If you touch us, there will be consequences; if you want a present you shall have it; but you are not to shame us by taking our horses and arms, and if you insist we well fight." There was a driving wind that night, and I feared the exposure and hardship if the tents were blown down and the fire blown out, as it threatened. We could scarcely keep a lamp or candle alight. No Ghazis came.
The battery opened fire upon them; and the infantry, coming into action at nine o'clock in the morning, did much execution among the crowded Ghazis. The 31st and 24th Punjab Infantry, under General Meiklejohn, had a long and arduous march on the enemy's left.
Colonel Galbraith and about one hundred officers and men of the 66th threw themselves into a garden enclosure, plied the enemy fiercely with bullets, and time after time beat back every rush of the ghazis, now rioting in that carnival of death.
The tents had all been struck, and the troops lay flat on the ground while the enemy's bullets swept the camp. This was kept up till two o'clock in the morning, the fire never slackening for a minute; and the monotony of the struggle was only broken by an occasional mad, fanatical rush of the Ghazis.
The fifty were Ghazis, half maddened with drugs and wholly mad with religious fanaticism. When they rushed the British fire ceased, and in the lull the order was given to close ranks and meet them with the bayonet.
The 31st were now joined by the West Kent, who came down from a spur on the west, and were able to drive the enemy out of several strong positions above the other village. On their way a half company, on reaching a sangar, were suddenly charged by a body of Ghazis. From the melee which ensued, many of the West Kents were killed and wounded, among them the officer in command.
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