Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu/298

 238 THE EMPEROR HUMAYUN mayun again escaped by the skin of his teeth. India had cast him off. From that day for fifteen years he led a life of wan- dering. He was in the deserts of Rajputana and Sind for three years, in great straits and hardships, trying to beat up recruits; there he fell in love with the daughter of his brother Hindal's sheikh, a sayyid of the Prophet's race; and there at Amarkot his son Akbar was born, October 15, 1542. Then he fled to Persia, where he became the not very welcome guest of Shah Tahmasp. Aided by the shah, he conquered Kandahar from his own brother Askari in 1545, and took Kabul from Kamran in 1547. He was now in much the same position that Babar had occupied before his invasion of India twenty-five years earlier. The next nine years were spent in varying fortunes, sometimes in conquest, sometimes in loss, and it was not until his brothers were dead or exiled that Humayun had peace in his little Afghan realm. Hindal fell in battle; Askari died on a pilgrimage to Mekka; and the irreconcilable Kamran, after repeated forgiveness, had to be blinded and sent to Mekka, where he too died. Humayun owed much of his misfortunes to this unnat- ural brother, and cannot be charged with anything but long-suffering patience of his misdeeds. Meanwhile Sher Shah had reduced the greater part of Hindustan to submission, and among the Moslems at least there was every disposition to hail the accession of an Afghan king, born in India, and gifted with unus- ual administrative as well as military talents. His