As I was looking at this spur, I noticed that there was a nice grassy slope just about level with us, and below that the cliffs went almost sheer down into the river.  Once on that slope, we could pretty well play skittles with the sangars below, as we could even now see clearly into them.  Unfortunately, the ground between looked frightful, a series of ridges like the teeth of a saw, the northern faces being covered with snow, which made the going particularly treacherous.  I had hardly noticed this when there was a puff of smoke and a report, and I saw to my disgust that on the edge of my nice grassy slope were a few clusters of innocent-looking rocks, which I now saw to be sangars, evidently occupied.  Just at this moment a man ran across the slope and began waving his coat to someone below, and more men showed themselves among the rocks.

The Levies were still looking for a path, and Humayun wanted to return the enemy’s fire; but as the Levies were armed only with carbines, and I hadn’t heard the whistle of the enemy’s shot, I judged it would be a waste of ammunition.  To get the distance, I told Gammer Sing, who had his Martini, to try a shot at the man waving his choga, with his sights at eight hundred yards.  I saw the bullet kick the dust to the right of the man, who jumped for a rock, so I knew carbines were no good at that distance.

A path was now found a little lower down, so I ordered an advance and on we went.  Our appearance was the signal for the enemy to open fire, but as only one or two bullets sang over us, I knew they couldn’t have many rifles.  We worked on steadily forward to about five hundred yards, when shots began to drop among us, so under cover of a ridge I divided the men into two groups, and sent the first group forward under cover of the fire of the second, until the first group reached the next ridge, when they covered the advance of the second group.

The ground was shocking bad, and what made it more annoying was that, as we were attacking towards the north, and the snow lay on the northern slopes, we had to test our way every step, and keep in single file just when our advance was most exposed.  I had to have a man in places to help me along.  I don’t mind bad ground when after mahkor, as you can take your own time, but I strongly object to taking the place of the mahkor.  Our advance never stopped, but by ten o’clock we had only gone some two hundred yards, and I could see our force crossing the river on to the plain below.

The enemy in our front now began to get excited, and we saw several of them run back and make signals to those below.  There was now only one ridge between us and the enemy, and we made for it.  As we rose, the enemy’s fire became pretty warm, but we were soon under cover again, and as our advanced men gained the ridge, they began firing and yelling as hard as they could go.  I thought something was up, so made a rush, a slip, and a scramble, and I