Part 6 (1/2)
The place was evidently deserted, for as we were watching, I saw a man go up and try the door, but, finding it closed, he went away again. The villages all round seemed deserted, and I could only see two men driving some cattle high up in the hills.
Before I had finished my sketch, the advance guard came up, and, shortly after, Colonel Kelly. There was a short halt to let the tail of the column close up, and then we commenced the descent. We were down on the river bank in twenty minutes, and the Levies waded across, I on my pony.
We found the remains of a bridge which had evidently only just been destroyed, and the material, I fancy, thrown into the river. The Levies were soon up to the fort, and we had the main gate down in a jiffy by using a tree as a battering-ram, and then the Levies went through the place like professional burglars. Before I had hardly got into the courtyard they had found the grain store, and were looting it. I put Gammer Sing on sentry duty over the entrance, and, Borradaile coming up, we inspected it, and found enough grain to last us some months. We now set the Levies to work to get beams for repairing the bridge; at first we could not find any long enough, until the Levies noticed the roof poles of the verandah. We had them out and ran them down to the river bank, opposite to where the Pioneers had drawn up on the farther bank.
It took some time to build the bridge, and it was pretty rickety when done, but it saved the men having to ford. Only one man fell into the river, but he was pulled out all right. The baggage did not arrive at the bridge till dark, and most of the coolies waded across, as there was not time for them to cross in single file on the bridge. The battery also forded, but the donkeys had to be unladen and the loads carried across by hand, and the donkeys were then driven in and made to swim. It was night before the rearguard began to cross, Cobbe, who was in command, not getting in till close on nine o'clock. A couple of shots were fired after dark, and there seemed no satisfactory explanation as to why they were fired, but n.o.body was. .h.i.t. The coolies were all put into the courtyard of the fort and a guard on the gate, and they soon had fires going, round which they huddled.
As it was impossible to carry away all the grain we had found, I got permission to issue a ration to all the coolies, who had most of them no supplies of any description, and, telling the guard who had replaced Gammer Sing to let the coolies in in single file, I then sent some Levies to drive them up like sheep. The news soon spread that food was going cheap, and they didn't require much driving. The flour was in a bin about six feet square, by four feet high, and only a small round hole at the top. We soon enlarged that so that a man could get in. I furnished him with a wooden shovel evidently meant for the job, and gave the order for the men to file in. As each man came in he received a shovelful, into his skirt tail, and then had to march round a box and out of the door. It took some two hours to finish the job, and even then the flour was not expended, while the grain, of which there was some in more bins, had not been touched. I left the guard over the door, and got back in time to get orders out for the next day's march, by which time Cobbe and the rearguard had come in, dinner was ready, and it had begun to rain.
We were camped in front of the fort, the men in a field, ourselves alongside on a praying place overlooking the river. The Levies were on the right, the ammunition and stores piled by the quarter-guard, the coolies locked up in the fort, and the pickets all right, so we turned in. Towards morning the rain began to fall heavily, so I pulled my bedding under the fort gateway, where I found Stewart and Oldham had already got the best places; however, I found a spot between two levies, and finished the night comfortably enough. We had not done a bad day's work on the whole. Marched from seven in the morning till six at night, covering some twenty miles of hilly country, made a bridge, and occupied one of the chief forts of the country. Cobbe, with the rearguard, had had the poorest time, but he had had the satisfaction of raiding into Buni.
We woke up next morning to find a dull grey sky and the rain pouring down, everything damp and miserable, and the cook having a fight with the wood to make it burn. Our proposed march for the day being only a short one, we did not start till eight A.M. As we were moving off, a Kashmir sepoy turned up who had been one of Edwardes' party, and whose life had been saved by a friendly villager who gave him some Chitrali clothes. I told him to fall in with the company, and he came down with us to Chitral. The remainder of the flour was distributed among the sepoys, and we took as much grain as we could find carriage for, but it was very little.
A small convoy of Punyal Levies joined us that day; they had been foraging up the Yarkhun valley, and had been sent after us by Moberly.
Our road led along the valley through cornfields and orchards, which, in spite of the rain, looked very pretty and green. The trees were just in their first foliage and the corn about a foot high, while all the peach and apricot trees were covered with bloom. We did not see a soul on our march, but the officer in charge of the rear-guard reported that as soon as we left Killa Drasan, the villagers came hurrying down the hill in crowds.
At one place we had a short halt on account of a battery pony, which was amusing itself by rolling down a slope with a gun on its back; it was brought back nothing the worse for its escapade, and we resumed our march.
Before getting into camp, our road led up from the lower valley on to some gentle, undulating spurs of the main range of hills; here there was a cl.u.s.ter of villages, and every available spot was cultivated.
On one of these spurs we camped, where three small villages or cl.u.s.ters of houses formed a triangle, the centre of which was a cornfield. This formed an excellent halting-place, as the men were billeted in the houses, each giving the other mutual protection. We formed our mess in part of the rooms of the headman's house, one Russool of Khusht; he was foster-father to the late Nizam-ul-mulk, but had acknowledged the opposition and joined Sher Afzul. (In the photograph he is sitting half hidden behind the Mehter's left arm, with his head rather raised.)
As we had been great friends during my first visit to Chitral,--(he was awfully fond of whisky),--I've no doubt he was pleased to hear I had been his guest in his own house, but I never had an opportunity to thank him, as he left Chitral hurriedly just before our arrival. The house is the best I have seen in Chitral, a fine stone-paved courtyard, surrounded on three sides with rooms and a verandah, a fine old chinar tree near the gateway on the fourth side. The princ.i.p.al rooms are high and larger than usual, but of the usual pattern. I think we got two companies of the Pioneers and ourselves into this house alone.
By three o'clock we had settled down, and were getting dry. The Levies were sent out foraging, and brought in several ponies. As our stores decreased, and more ponies were brought in, we had spare ponies for riding, and we were nearly all mounted by the time we reached Chitral.
However, we had not been there ten days before the owners began turning up, and we were ordered to give them back, much to our disgust. It was quite a treat to be in camp and settled before dark, and I've no doubt the coolies were as thankful as we were. The only drawback to our food was the flour of which the chupatties were made; it was coa.r.s.e to a degree, and seemed to consist chiefly of minute speckly pieces of husk, which used to tickle our throats up in the most unpleasant manner, and had a nasty habit of choking the swallower, in addition to being highly indigestible. We used at last to sift the flour through linen, and the residuum was a surprise and revelation.
We had intended to march the next morning by 7 A.M., with the intention of getting to a village called Parpish, but as it was still pelting with rain, the march was deferred, to give the weather a chance of clearing up, which it very kindly did about 10 A.M., when we started. The Kashmir Company was on advance guard that day, so I went with them, two levies leading, as usual, about a quarter of a mile ahead. We struck up country for about two miles, till we got to a kotal, or saddle, from whence we had a splendid view of the surrounding country. During a halt, Colonel Kelly came up, and I was able to point out to him the different places--Koragh Defile, where Ross's party had been cut up, Reshun, where Edwardes and Fowler had held out for a week, and Barnas, a village we reached the next day. All these places were on the opposite bank of the river and several thousand feet below us. We had, by taking our present route, avoided a very difficult and dangerous part of the country, and no doubt much disgusted the inhabitants, who, on the old route, would have had all things their own way.
By two o'clock we had reached the village of Gurka, where we were met by a deputation, from whom we demanded certain supplies to be brought to our camp on pain of severe punishment if not complied with, and by 4 P.M. we got to the hamlet of Lun, and as there was a good camping ground, good water and firewood, Colonel Kelly decided to halt there.
Here also supplies were demanded, the amount depending a good deal on the number of houses and the knowledge of the locality possessed by Humayun. The Lunites paid up smartly enough, as we were too close neighbours to allow of any hesitation; but the Gurka contribution had only partly come in the next morning, so that a party of the Levies was sent back, and the Gurka villagers had the trouble of bringing the loads along to Barnas, instead of only two miles into Lun, while the headman was made to carry a box of ammunition all the way to Chitral.
Before evening the sun came out, and it was very jolly in camp. We had some nice short turf to lie on, and the night was not too cold for comfort. There were good places for the pickets, and the camp was compact and handy.
CHAPTER IX
NEARING CHITRAL
The next morning, April 17th, we started sharp at 7 A.M. Two prisoners had been brought in the night before, one of whom had a Snider and twenty rounds of ammunition, the other a matchlock. They confessed that they had fought us at Nisa Gol, and stated they were now going home. We thought differently, and requested them to carry boxes of ammunition; one of them, the owner of the Snider, objected, on the ground that he was a mullah, but the objection was overruled as frivolous, and he accompanied us to Chitral. We always gave the ammunition to doubtful characters, as they were then under the direct supervision of the guard, and the loads were also more awkward and heavier than skins of flour.
We dropped down the hills now to the river bank. I was on rearguard, a nuisance at the best of times, as any check at the head of the column acts on the rearguard in increasing ratio to the length of the column, so a good deal of time is spent in wondering why the d.i.c.kens they don't get on in front. That was a particularly bad day for halts: the first one was caused by the column having to cross the Perpish Gol, a very similar place to the Nisa Gol, but undefended. About two miles farther on, the road ran across the face of a cliff, and had been destroyed; it took some three hours to repair it, and then the baggage could only get along slowly.
We had some five unladen donkeys that were kept at the end of the baggage column in case of need, and, one of them trying to push past another, they both rolled over the cliff and went down about a hundred feet on to the road below, which here made a zigzag. The first donkey who came down landed on his head and broke his silly neck; but the second donkey had better luck, and landed on the first donkey in a sitting position. He got up, sniffed contemptuously at his late friend, and resumed his journey. We rolled the remains of the elect over the cliff into the river, and also resumed our course.
During this march and following ones we frequently saw the bodies of men floating down the river or stranded in shoals. They were probably the Sikhs killed with Ross, or perhaps some of Edwardes' party. By 4.30 P.M.
the rearguard had crossed the cliff, and, rounding the shoulder of a spur, descended to a plain, bare of vegetation, with the exception of the inevitable wormwood. We crossed this for about a mile, and then struck down to the river, and saw the Pioneers and guns drawn up on the farther bank, and just moving off.