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More than once during the years that I had lived with him in Baker Street I had observed that a small vanity underlay my companion's quiet and didactic manner. I made no remark, however, but sat nursing my wounded leg. I had a Jezail bullet through it some time before, and, though it did not prevent me from walking, it ached wearily at every change of the weather.
"Now, if another fellow was feverish and delirious he would surely be in some danger, and yet you will tell me that I am in none. Look at this, now." He bared his chest and showed me a puckered wound over the region of the heart. "That's where the jezail bullet of a Hillman went in.
Elliott, with one gun and the Sowars, went to the farther ravine, while I, with the infantry, hurried to the other, but we found it was a false alarm. I saw no signs of the Hillmen, and though we were greeted by a splutter of jezail bullets we were unable to capture any of the rascals. Woe betide them if they fall into my hands.
The force could not close up until the morning, ten miles short of Jugdulluk, and already the Afghans were swarming on every adjacent height. All the way down the broken slope to Jugdulluk the little column trudged through the gauntlet of jezail fire which lined the road with dead and wounded.
On the other hand it seemed unsoldierly to lie down to sleep while at intervals the booming of the guns reminded us, that comrades were fighting for their lives a few miles away in the valley. "Two thousand pounds of education Drops to a ten-rupee jezail. . . . . . . Strike hard who cares. Shoot straight who can. The odds are on the cheaper man."
It contained no picture either of a woman or a horse. The dingy white wall was relieved by groups of barbarous weapons Thibetan daggers, a pair of wicked-looking kookries, the jezail and Brown Bess of Border tribesmen, and the murderous Afghan knife, whose triangular two-foot blade has disfigured too many British uniforms.
I had remained indoors all day, for the weather had taken a sudden turn to rain, with high autumnal winds, and the Jezail bullet which I had brought back in one of my limbs as a relic of my Afghan campaign throbbed with dull persistence.
Two days later Shumshoodeen, the Afghan leader, drew up some 10,000 men in order of battle on high ground left of the British camp. Nott attacked with vigour, advancing to turn the Afghan left. In reprisal the enemy threw their strength on his left, supporting their jezail fire with artillery, whereupon Nott changed front to the left, deployed, and then charged.
As I neared the largest sangar, I saw a native clothed in a red dressing-gown, sitting on the ground with a long native jezail. Rather surprised at seeing one of the enemy thus armed, I went up to him, and as I did so, he picked up his gun. I had my revolver on him in a second, and told him to drop the gun, which he did.
I was removed from my brigade and attached to the Berkshires, with whom I served at the fatal battle of Maiwand. There I was struck on the shoulder by a Jezail bullet, which shattered the bone and grazed the subclavian artery.
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