But after all, military difficulties are possibly only introduced by a beneficent Providence lest warlike operations should become too easy; at any rate these were in due course overcome, though it required considerable ingenuity to do so.  In the first place the Guides were marched off, without a notion what they were required for, or whither they were going.  All they knew was that they were plodding along the Nowshera road on a very hot evening in August.  When well on their way, like a man-of-war at sea they opened their sealed orders, and learnt that in the vicinity of Nowshera they would find a fleet of boats on the Kabul River.  Embarking on these they were to drop down that river, now in flood, to its confluence with the Indus at Attock.  Here the flotilla was to be concealed while one or two intelligent men were sent ashore to a place of tryst, whither Major R.B.  Campbell, the Commanding Officer, and the other officers on leave, had been ordered to arrive by a certain hour.  Then, complete in officers, the flotilla was to slip anchor again and drop down the roaring flood of the Indus for another twenty-eight miles to Shadipore, the local Gretna Green, to judge from its name.  It speaks highly for the skill with which the operation was planned, and the exactitude with which it was executed, to record that it was carried out without a hitch.  The Guides by a seventy-eight mile circuit now found themselves south-east, instead of north, of the objective, and the enemy were consequently taken from a totally unexpected quarter.

Another of Cavignari’s coups may perhaps be given as illustrating not only his policy of smiting hard, instead of palavering, but also the necessity for strict secrecy.  In 1878 when the Swat River Canal, which has turned the desert plain of Yusufzai into one great wheat-field, was under construction, the more pestilential class of mullah, always on the look-out for a cause to inflame Mahomedan fanaticism against the English unbeliever, stirred up the tribesmen to interfere with the work.  A raid was consequently made by them, and a lot of harmless coolies murdered.  The village of Sapri, just across the border, was chiefly implicated in this outrage, and Cavignari immediately demanded the surrender of the murderers, as well as a heavy fine in money wherewith to pension the families of the victims.  Secure in their fastness the men of Sapri sent replies, varying from the evasive to the impertinent.

Cavignari said nothing more, but secretly warned the Guides, who lay forty-three miles away, to be ready to act.  So carefully was the news kept that a movement was on foot, that some of the officers were playing racquets up to the last moment, and were called from the court to march at once.  Captain Wigram Battye was in command, and took with him the Guides’ cavalry and a detachment of Guides’ infantry mounted on mules.  Marching all night, the force arrived three miles beyond Abazai and within eight