At Yasin there was the most severe fighting.  It lasted for three days, and in effect amounted to a little tribal war.  A man called Mackintosh commanded, and he had the advantage of having regulars with him, Gurkhas for the most part, who were old campaigners.  The place had seemed unquiet for some days, and certain precautions had been taken, so that when the rioting broke out at sunset it was easy to get the town under subjection and prepare for external attack.  The Chiling Pass into Chitral had given trouble of old, but Mackintosh was scarcely prepared for the systematic assaults of Punialis and Tangiris from the east and south.  Having always been famous as an alarmist he put the right interpretation on the business, and settled down to what he half hoped, half feared, might be a great frontier war.  The place was strong only on the north side, and the defence was as much a question of engineering as of war.  His Sepoys toiled gallantly at the incomplete defences, while the rest fought hand to hand—­bayonet against knife, Metford against Enfield—­to cover their labour.  He lost many men, but on the evening of the next day he had the satisfaction of seeing the fortifications complete, and he awaited a siege with equanimity, as he was well victualled.

On the second night the enemy again attacked, but the moon was bright, and they were no match for his sharpshooters.  About two in the morning they fell back, and for the next day it looked as if they proposed to invest the garrison.  But by the third evening they began to melt away, taking with them such small plunder as they had won.  Mackintosh, who was a man of enterprise, told off a detachment for pursuit, and cursed bitterly the fate which had broken his ankle with a rifle-bullet.

In the south along the railway the warnings came in good time.  At Rawal Pindi there was some small difficulty with native officials, a large body of whom seemed to have unaccountably disappeared.  This delayed for some time the sending of a freight-train to Abbotabad, but by and by substitutes were found, and the works left under guard.  The telegram to Peshawur found things in readiness there, for memories of old trouble still linger, and people sleep lightly on that frontier.  Word came of native riots in the south, at Lahore and Amritsar, and the line of towns which mark the way to Delhi.  In some places extraordinary accidents were reported.  Certain officers had gone off on holiday and had not returned; odd and unintelligible commands had come to perplex the minds of others; whole camps were reported sick where sickness was least expected.  A little rising of certain obscure rivers had broken up an important highway by destroying all the bridges save the one which carried the railway.  The whole north was on the brink of a sudden disorganization, but the brink had still to be passed.  It lay with its masters to avert calamity; and its masters, going about with haggard faces, prayed for daylight and a few hours to prepare.