Seizing such knolls and points of vantage as existed, his battle-line took the form of a semicircle, with one company of the 92nd Highlanders and two companies of the Guides in reserve.  The enemy, now increased to three thousand warriors, steadily advanced, and with great bravery planted their standards in some places within one hundred yards of the British line; but that last one hundred yards they could not, by all the eloquence of their leaders or the promises of Paradise from their priests, be induced to cross.  Nor was it only the Afghans who felt the tightening strain; it was an anxious moment for the British, too, for given one slight slip, one weakhearted corner, and the whole thin line might have been swept away by the onslaught of those fierce masses.

It was then that Jenkins used a curious and expensive, but, as it proved, effective expedient.  He ordered the Guides’ cavalry to mount, and, exposed at close range to the enemy’s fire, to patrol quietly from one end of the line to the other, as a sort of moving reserve; a demonstration, in fact, that even if the enemy managed to break through the thin line of the infantry at any point, it would only be to fall on the dreaded swords of the cavalry.  The behaviour of the men during this trying ordeal was above all praise; and indeed it requires high qualities of nerve and courage to walk one’s horse up and down for a couple of hours under a hail of bullets, without being able to return the compliment in any way.

The enemy’s numbers had increased to five thousand, and still Jenkins’s little force held on with dogged courage, and though it could not make an inch of way, it refused to concede one.  It was now past one o’clock, and the strain lay heavy on our men after seven hours of this bull-dog business; when the twinkle of the cheerful heliograph from Kabul gave fresh heart to all, and almost immediately afterwards the advance skirmishers of General Macpherson’s column came into view, and the situation was saved.  Then, borne on the flood of the reinforcements, Highlanders and Guides sprang to their feet and dashed at the now flying enemy.  The cavalry and artillery, too, at last relieved of their long and dangerous vigil, dashed off in pursuit, and for four long miles they fell with relentless fury on the scattered and demoralised foe.

This was the last fight which the Guides had in the Afghan War.  When Roberts and his gallant ten thousand marched to Kandahar, they were sent back to their hard-earned rest, after two years of incessant warfare, with a casualty roll of two hundred and forty-eight of all ranks and one hundred and forty-two horses; and with five hundred recruits to redress the balance.

CHAPTER X

WAR STORIES