Page:The Earl of Auckland.djvu/153

Rh Maclaren's brigade set out indeed on its long and difficult march to Kábul; but the snow was already falling in the last days of November about Khelát-i-Ghilzai, and Maclaren not unwillingly retraced his steps. The only fresh arrival in the Kábul intrenchment was that of Pottinger and Haughton, both badly wounded, with one Gúrkha Sepoy, who alone, out of several hundred fighting-men, had made good their escape from Chárikár in the Kohistán.

On the 22nd of November the enemy once more occupied the heights of Bemárú, as well as the village which had lately furnished our sole supplies. A futile effort to dislodge them was followed up in the dark of the next morning by a bolder movement in greater force. But the right moment for storming the village was lost through Shelton's obstinacy; the storming party mistook their way; the infantry were exposed in two squares to a withering matchlock fire, under which the ill-placed cavalry also fell fast, and our single gun became unserviceable. The enemy, reinforced by thousands of Gházi fanatics, renewed the still doubtful fight with resistless fury, retook the gun which had once been rescued, and drove our troops before them in hopeless rout. A mingled mass of fugitives and pursuers swept down the hill towards cantonments; and the broken remnants of Shelton's force were saved from annihilation only by the act of one friendly chief, Usmán Khán, who suddenly recalled his own followers from the pursuit '.