The screw-guns were to sh.e.l.l the head of each Afghan rush that was made in close formation, and the Cavalry, held in reserve in the right valley, were to gently stimulate the break-up which would follow on the combined attack. The Brigadier, sitting upon a rock overlooking the valley, would watch the battle unrolled at his feet. The Fore and Aft would debouch from the central gorge, the Goorkhas from the left, and the Highlanders from the right, for the reason that the left flank of the enemy seemed as though it required the most hammering. It was not every day that an Afghan force would take ground in the open, and the Brigadier was resolved to make the most of it.
"If we only had a few more men," he said plaintively, "we could surround the creatures and crumple "em up thoroughly. As it is, I"m afraid we can only cut them up as they run. It"s a great pity."
The Fore and Aft had enjoyed unbroken peace for five days, and were beginning, in spite of dysentery, to recover their nerve. But they were not happy, for they did not know the work in hand, and had they known, would not have known how to do it. Throughout those five days in which old soldiers might have taught them the craft of the game, they discussed together their misadventures in the past--how such an one was alive at dawn and dead ere the dusk, and with what shrieks and struggles such another had given up his soul under the Afghan knife. Death was a new and horrible thing to the sons of mechanics who were used to die decently of zymotic disease; and their careful conservation in barracks had done nothing to make them look upon it with less dread.
Very early in the dawn the bugles began to blow, and the Fore and Aft, filled with a misguided enthusiasm, turned out without waiting for a cup of coffee and a biscuit; and were rewarded by being kept under arms in the cold while the other regiments leisurely prepared for the fray. All the world knows that it is ill taking the breeks off a Highlander. It is much iller to try to make him stir unless he is convinced of the necessity for haste. 507 The Fore and Aft waited, leaning upon their rifles and listening to the protests of their empty stomachs. The Colonel did his best to remedy the default of lining as soon as it was borne in upon him that the affair would not begin at once, and so well did he succeed that the coffee was just ready when--the men moved off, their Band leading. Even then there had been a mistake in time, and the Fore and Aft came out into the valley ten minutes before the proper hour. Their Band wheeled to the right after reaching the open, and retired behind a little rocky knoll still playing while the Regiment went past.
It was not a pleasant sight that opened on the uninstructed view, for the lower end of the valley appeared to be filled by an army in position--real and actual regiments attired in red coats, and--of this there was no doubt--firing Martini-Henry bullets which cut up the ground a hundred yards in front of the leading company. Over that pock-marked ground the Regiment had to pa.s.s, and it opened the ball with a general and profound courtesy to the piping pickets; ducking in perfect time, as though it had been brazed on a rod. Being half capable of thinking for itself, it fired a volley by the simple process of pitching its rifle into its shoulder and pulling the trigger. The bullets may have accounted for some of the watchers on the hill side, but they certainly did not affect the ma.s.s of enemy in front, while the noise of the rifles drowned any orders that might have been given.
"Good G.o.d!" 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."
But the screw-guns, in working round the heights, had stumbled upon a wasp"s nest of a small mud fort which they incontinently sh.e.l.led 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.
Where were the other regiments, and why did these n.i.g.g.e.rs use Martinis?
They took open order instinctively, lying down and firing at random, rushing a few paces forward and lying down again, according to the regulations. Once in this formation, each man felt himself desperately alone, and edged in towards his fellow for comfort"s sake.
Then the crack of his neighbor"s rifle at his ear led him to fire as rapidly as he could--again for the sake of the comfort of the noise. The reward was not long delayed. Five volleys plunged the files in banked smoke impenetrable to the eye, and the bullets began to take ground twenty or thirty yards in front of the firers, as the weight of the bayonet dragged down and to the right arms wearied with holding the kick of the leaping Martini. The Company Commanders peered helplessly through the smoke, the more nervous mechanically trying to fan it away with their helmets.
"High and to the left!" bawled a Captain till he was hoa.r.s.e. "No good!
Cease firing, and let it drift away a bit."
Three and four times the bugles shrieked the order, and when it was obeyed the Fore and Aft looked that their foe should be lying before them in mown swaths of men. A light wind drove the smoke to leeward, and showed the enemy still in position and apparently unaffected. A quarter of a ton of lead had been buried a furlong in front of them, as the ragged earth attested.
That was not demoralizing to the Afghans, who have not European nerves.
They were waiting for the mad riot to die down, and were firing quietly into the heart of the smoke. A private of the Fore and Aft spun up his company shrieking with agony, another was kicking the earth and gasping, and a third, ripped through the lower intestines by a jagged bullet, was calling aloud on his comrades to put him out of his pain. These were the casualties, and they were not soothing to hear or see. The smoke cleared to a dull haze.
Then the foe began to shout with a great shouting, and a ma.s.s--a black ma.s.s--detached itself from the main body, and rolled over the ground at horrid speed. It was composed of, perhaps, three hundred men, who would shout and fire and slash if the rush of their fifty comrades who were determined to die carried home. 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.
Any one who knew the business could have told the Fore and Aft that the only way of dealing with a Ghazi rush is by volleys at long ranges; because a man who means to die, who desires to die, who will gain heaven by dying, must, in nine cases out of ten, kill a man who has a lingering prejudice in favour of life. Where they should have closed and gone forward, the Fore and Aft opened out and skirmished, and where they should have opened out and fired, they closed and waited.
A man dragged from his blankets half awake and unfed is never in a pleasant frame of mind. Nor does his happiness increase when he watches the whites of the eyes of three hundred six-foot fiends upon whose beards the foam is lying, upon whose tongues is a roar of wrath, and in whose hands are yard-long knives.
The Fore and Aft heard the Goorkha bugles bringing that regiment forward at the double, while the neighing of the Highland pipes came from the left. They strove to stay where they were, though the bayonets wavered down the line like the oars of a ragged boat. Then they felt body to body the amazing physical strength of their foes; a shriek of pain ended the rush, and the knives fell amid scenes not to be told. The men clubbed together and smote blindly--as often as not at their own fellows. Their front crumpled like paper, and the fifty Ghazis pa.s.sed on; their backers, now drunk with success, fighting as madly as they.
Then the rear ranks were bidden to close up, and the subalterns dashed into the stew--alone. For the rear-ranks had heard the clamour in front, the yells and the howls of pain, and had seen the dark stale blood that makes afraid. They were not going to stay. It was the rushing of the camps over again. Let their officers go to h.e.l.l, if they chose; they would get away from the knives.
"Come on!" shrieked the subalterns, and their men, cursing them, drew back, each closing in to his neighbour and wheeling round.
Charteris and Devlin, subalterns of the last company, faced their death alone in the belief that their men would follow.
"You"ve killed me, you cowards," sobbed Devlin and dropped, cut from the shoulder-strap to the centre of the chest; and a fresh detachment of his men retreating, always retreating, trampled him under foot as they made for the pa.s.s whence they had emerged.
I kissed her in the kitchen and I kissed her in the hall Child"un, child"un, follow me! Oh Golly, said the cook, is he gwine to kiss us all? Halla--Halla--Halla--Hallelujah!
The Goorkhas were pouring through the left gorge and over the heights at the double to the invitation of their Regimental Quick-step. The black rocks were crowned with dark green spiders as the bugles gave tongue jubilantly:--
In the morning! In the morning by the bright light!
When Gabriel blows his trumpet in the morning!
The Goorkha rear companies tripped and blundered over loose stones.
The front files halted for a moment to take stock of the valley and to settle stray boot-laces. Then a happy little sigh of contentment soughed down the ranks, and it was as though the land smiled, for behold there below was the enemy, and it was to meet them that the Goorkhas had doubled so hastily. There was much enemy. There would be amus.e.m.e.nt. The little men hitched their kukris well to hand, and gaped expectantly at their officers as terriers grin ere the stone is cast for them to fetch.
The Goorkhas" ground sloped downward to the valley, and they enjoyed a fair view of the proceedings. They sat upon the boulders to watch, for their officers were not going to waste their wind in a.s.sisting to repulse a Ghazi rush more than half a mile away. Let the white men look to their own front.
"Hi! yi!" said the Subadar-Major, who was sweating profusely. "Dam fools yonder, stand close order! This is no time for close order, it is the time for volleys. Ugh!"
Horrified, amused, and indignant, the Goorkhas beheld the retirement of the Fore and Aft with a running chorus of oaths and commentaries.
"They run! The white men run! Colonel Sahib, may we also do a little running?" murmured Runbir Thappa, the Senior Jemadar.
But the Colonel would have none of it. "Let the beggars be cut up a little," said he wrathfully. "Serves "em right. They"ll be prodded into facing round in a minute." He looked through his field-gla.s.ses, and caught the glint of an officer"s sword.
"Beating "em with the flat--d.a.m.ned conscripts! How the Ghazis are walking into them!" said he.
The Fore and Aft, heading back, bore with them their officers. The narrowness of the pa.s.s forced the mob into solid formation, and the rear ranks delivered some sort of a wavering volley. The Ghazis drew off, for they did not know what reserve the gorge might hide. Moreover, it was never wise to chase white men too far. They returned as wolves return to cover, satisfied with the slaughter that they had done, and only stopping to slash at the wounded on the ground. A quarter of a mile had the Fore and Aft retreated, and now, jammed in the pa.s.s, was quivering with pain, shaken and demoralised with fear, while the officers, maddened beyond control, smote the men with the hilts and the flats of their swords.
"Get back! Get back, you cowards--you women! Right about face--column of companies, form--you hounds!" shouted the Colonel, and the subalterns swore aloud. But the Regiment wanted to go--to go anywhere out of the range of those merciless knives. It swayed to and fro irresolutely with shouts and outcries, while from the right the Goorkhas dropped volley after volley of cripple-stopper Snider bullets at long range into the mob of the Ghazis returning to their own troops.
The Fore and Aft Band, though protected from direct fire by the rocky knoll under which it had sat down, fled at the first rush. Jakin and Lew would have fled also, but their short legs left them fifty yards in the rear, and by the time the Band had mixed with the Regiment, they were painfully aware that they would have to close in alone and unsupported.
"Get back to that rock," gasped Jakin. "They won"t see us there."
And they returned to the scattered instruments of the Band, their hearts nearly bursting their ribs.
"Here"s a nice show for us," said Jakin, throwing himself full length on the ground. "A bloomin" fine show for British Infantry! Oh, the devils!
They"ve gone and left us alone here! Wot"ll we do?"
Lew took possession of a cast-off water-bottle, which naturally was full of canteen rum, and drank till he coughed again.
"Drink," said he shortly. "They"ll come back in a minute or two--you see."
Jakin drank, but there was no sign of the Regiment"s return. They could hear a dull clamour from the head of the valley of retreat, and saw the Ghazis slink back, quickening their pace as the Goorkhas fired at them.
"We"re all that"s left of the Band, an" we"ll be cut up as sure as death," said Jakin.
"I"ll die game, then," said Lew thickly, fumbling with his tiny drummer"s sword. The drink was working on his brain as it was on Jakin"s.
""Old on! I know something better than fightin"," said Jakin, stung by the splendour of a sudden thought due chiefly to rum. "Tip our bloomin"
cowards yonder the word to come back. The Paythan beggars are well away.
Come on, Lew! We won"t get hurt. Take the fife an" give me the drum. The Old Step for all your bloomin" guts are worth! There"s a few of our men coming back now. Stand up, ye drunken little defaulter. By your right--quick march!"
He slipped the drum-sling over his shoulder, thrust the fife into Lew"s hand, and the two boys marched out of the cover of the rock into the open, making a hideous hash of the first bars of the "British Grenadiers."
As Lew had said, a few of the Fore and Aft were coming back sullenly and shamefacedly under the stimulus of blows and abuse; their red coats shone at the head of the valley, and behind them were wavering bayonets.
But between this shattered line and the enemy, who with Afghan suspicion feared that the hasty retreat meant an ambush, and had not moved therefore, lay half a mile of level ground dotted only by the wounded.
The tune settled into full swing and the boys kept shoulder to shoulder, Jakin banging the drum as one possessed. The one fife made a thin and pitiful squeaking, but the tune carried far, even to the Goorkhas.