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At Jugdulluk they found General Elphinstone, Brigadier Shelton, and Captain Johnson, and learned the fate which had overtaken the marching force. On the following day Akbar quitted Jugdulluk with his hostages and the ladies, all of whom were virtually prisoners, and rode away through the mountains in a northerly direction.
As it is approached from the Jugdulluk direction the flanking elevations recede and merge in the transverse ridge, which is crowned by a low-cut abrupt rocky upheaval, worn down somewhat where the road passes over the crest by the friction of traffic.
The harassed advance reached Jugdulluk in the afternoon of the 11th, and took post behind some ruins on a height by the roadside, the surviving officers forming line in support of the gallant rear-guard struggling forward through its environment of assailants. As Shelton and his brave fellows burst through the cordon they were greeted by cheers from the knoll.
Roberts, surveying the rugged country to the east of Cabul, had discerned that the hill road toward Jugdulluk by Luttabund, was at once opener and shorter than the customary tortuous and overhung route through the Khoord Cabul Pass and by Tezeen. The pioneers were set to work to improve the former.
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.
Captain Souter of the 44th, with three or four privates all of whom as well as himself were wounded, was spared and carried into captivity; he saved the colours of his regiment, which he had tied round his waist before leaving Jugdulluk. A group of mounted officers had pushed forward as soon as they had cleared the barrier on the crest. Six only reached Futtehabad in safety.
This Jugdulluk fighting was, however, little more than a skirmish, and Pollock's people were to experience more severe opposition before they should emerge from the passes on to the Cabul plain.
But his soldiers, who carried in their haversacks seven days' provisions, would gladly have marched without any baggage at all, and the chief himself was eager to hurry forward, for Nott had written that he expected to reach Cabul on 15th September, and Pollock was burning to be there first. In the Jugdulluk Pass, on the 8th, he found the Ghilzais in considerable force on the heights.
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