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Updated: June 20, 2025
The bullets may have accounted for some of the watchers on the hill side, but they certainly did not affect the mass of enemy in front, while the noise of the rifles drowned any orders that might have been given. "Good God!" said the Brigadier, sitting on the rock high above all. "That Regiment has spoilt the whole show. Hurry up the others, and let the screw-guns get off."
Just as I was getting ready to go to sleep I heard a jingle of harness and a grunt, and a mule passed me shaking his wet ears. He belonged to a screw-gun battery, for I could hear the rattle of the straps and rings and chains and things on his saddle pad. The screw-guns are tiny little cannon made in two pieces, that are screwed together when the time comes to use them.
An assurance was, it is reported, given to the leaders of the column that by eleven o'clock next morning they would be relieved. So they would if White had won his action. But The force chosen to operate independently consisted of four and a half companies of the Gloucester regiment, six companies of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, and No. 10 Mountain Battery of six seven-pounder screw-guns.
On the heights the screw-guns ceased firing they had run out of ammunition and the Brigadier groaned, for the musketry fire could not sufficiently smash the retreat. Long before the last volleys were fired, the litters were out in force looking for the wounded. The battle was over, and, but for want of fresh troops, the Afghans would have been wiped off the earth.
But the screw-guns, in working round the heights, had stumbled upon a wasp's nest of a small mud fort which they incontinently shelled at eight hundred yards, to the huge discomfort of the occupants, who were unaccustomed to weapons of such devilish precision. The Fore and Aft continued to go forward, but with shortened stride.
Jack felt sick, and his teeth chattered; he had never before seen a man hit, and it was his first experience of the sacrifice of human flesh and blood. At the same moment, like a clap of thunder, one of the screw-guns was discharged; the droning whizz of the shell grew fainter and fainter a pause and then the boom of its explosion was returned in a muffled echo from the distant hillside.
The square was now moving slowly on a line parallel with the rocks, stopping every few minutes to pick up wounded, and to allow the screw-guns and Gardner to make themselves felt.
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