Commissariat after the battery had had first pick.  It was an awful pull up that spur.  I suppose we went up at least two thousand feet.  I was all right, as I had a pony, but it must have been agony for the laden coolies.  Once up, the going was easy enough; open, grassy downs, gradually sloping down from where we stood to the junction of the Yarkhun and Turikho valleys, though the actual sides of the tableland dropped steeply down to the rivers.  By our present divergence we had turned the flank of any position the enemy could take up between Mastuj and Killa Drasan, and had also got the higher ground, our road from here onwards being down hill.

I went ahead now with the Levies, as I wanted to find out if the fort was held at Drasan.

We got to the edge of the downs by 2 P.M., looking straight down on the fort, which was the other side of the river, but from our position we could see right down into the interior.

The place was evidently deserted, for as we were watching, I saw a man go up and try the door, but, finding it closed, he went away again.  The villages all round seemed deserted, and I could only see two men driving some cattle high up in the hills.

Before I had finished my sketch, the advance guard came up, and, shortly after, Colonel Kelly.  There was a short halt to let the tail of the column close up, and then we commenced the descent.  We were down on the river bank in twenty minutes, and the Levies waded across, I on my pony.  We found the remains of a bridge which had evidently only just been destroyed, and the material, I fancy, thrown into the river.  The Levies were soon up to the fort, and we had the main gate down in a jiffy by using a tree as a battering-ram, and then the Levies went through the place like professional burglars.  Before I had hardly got into the courtyard they had found the grain store, and were looting it.  I put Gammer Sing on sentry duty over the entrance, and, Borradaile coming up, we inspected it, and found enough grain to last us some months.  We now set the Levies to work to get beams for repairing the bridge; at first we could not find any long enough, until the Levies noticed the roof poles of the verandah.  We had them out and ran them down to the river bank, opposite to where the Pioneers had drawn up on the farther bank.

It took some time to build the bridge, and it was pretty rickety when done, but it saved the men having to ford.  Only one man fell into the river, but he was pulled out all right.  The baggage did not arrive at the bridge till dark, and most of the coolies waded across, as there was not time for them to cross in single file on the bridge.  The battery also forded, but the donkeys had to be unladen and the loads carried across by hand, and the donkeys were then driven in and made to swim.  It was night before the rearguard began to cross, Cobbe, who was in command, not getting in till close on nine o’clock.  A couple of shots were fired after dark, and there seemed no satisfactory explanation as to why they were fired, but nobody was hit.  The coolies were all put into the courtyard of the fort and a guard on the gate, and they soon had fires going, round which they huddled.