Page:The Earl of Auckland.djvu/168

162 Tazín was followed by a dreary night-march over the hills to Jagdalak. Darkness for a few hours favoured our men, but beyond Seh-Bába their merciless pursuers overtook them; and once more troops and followers became mingled in wild disorder. The blood of many brave men stained the snow before their comrades reached Jagdalak in the afternoon of the 11th. Shelton himself, with a handful of his troops, had held the post of danger in the rear, fighting all day against fearful odds.

Here, behind some ruined walls, the two hundred survivors of the Kábul force, worn out with hunger, thirst, and fatigue, sought rest and shelter from the bullets of their ruthless foes. A few hundred camp-followers crouched beside them. At a conference with the English leaders Akbar repeated his last proposal, which Elphinstone and Shelton again declined. They were now detained as hostages for the evacuation of Jalálábád. Next morning — the 12th — the conference was renewed in the presence of many Ghilzai chiefs, who had come to pay their homage to the Bárakzái Sirdár. His appeals to the compassion or the avarice of men who clamoured only for the blood of the hated infidels were so far successful, that they agreed for a handsome bribe to escort the English remnant unharmed to Jalálábád. But that door of escape was closed already to Anquetil and his dwindled band. Unaware of Akbar's purpose, and driven desperate by the galling matchlock-fire which their boldest sallies had failed to silence, they marched off in the night across the valley towards the Jagdalak Pass.