Page:The Earl of Auckland.djvu/166

160 a foot deep, even on the regular track. Next followed a train of doolies bearing the women and children, guarded by Lawrence and a few score horse and foot. Shelton led the main column, and Colonel Chambers brought up the rear. About 12,000 camp-followers stumbled along as they best could through the snow and slush. Long before the rear-guard started, a mob of Afgháns filled the intrenchment, destroying or burning whatever they could not carry away. Many of our people fell by the way, killed by cold and hunger, or pierced by bullets from the far-reaching jazails.

By nightfall the force had got no further than Baigrám, only five miles off. A night of intense suffering for most was followed by a day of prolonged disaster. The troops and followers got mixed up together in ever worse confusion. Almost every step in the short march to Butkhák was taken in blood. The sabre and the matchlock added their hundreds to the victims slain by the cruel frost. Guns were lost or abandoned, heaps of baggage disappeared, and half of our Sepoys threw away the arms which their numbed fingers could no longer grasp. That night the troops lay famished out on the snow which by next morning had become for many their bed of death. No tents remained, save for the women and children and a few of the commanders.

Thus far at least there had been a semblance of order. On the 8th, when the force entered the grim gorge of the Khurd Kábul, under a rolling fire from