e with and overwhelm our small force, Kabul would be his; but if,
by any possibility, his advance could be retarded until Macpherson
should come up, we might hope to retain possession of the city. It
was, therefore, to the Afghan leader's interest to press on, while it
was to ours to delay him as long as we possibly could.

Pole Carew presently returned with a message from Massy that the enemy
were close upon him, and that he could not keep them in check. I
desired Pole Carew to go back, order Massy to retire the guns, and
cover the movement by a charge of Cavalry.

The charge was led by Lieutenant-Colonel Cleland and Captain Neville,
the former of whom fell dangerously wounded; but the ground, terraced
for irrigation purposes and intersected by nullas, so impeded
our Cavalry that the charge, heroic as it was, made little or no
impression upon the overwhelming numbers of the enemy, now flushed
with the triumph of having forced our guns to retire. The effort,
however, was worthy of the best traditions of our British and Indian
Cavalry, and that it failed in its object was no fault of our gallant
soldiers. To assist them in their extremity, I ordered two of
Smyth-Windham's four guns to halt and come into action while the other
two continued to retire, but these had not gone far before they got
into such difficult ground that one had to be spiked and abandoned in
a water-cut, where Smyth-Windham found it when he came up after
having fired a few rounds at the fast advancing foe. I now ordered
Smyth-Windham to make for the village of Bhagwana with his three
remaining guns, as the only chance left of saving them. This he did,
and having reached the village, he again opened fire from behind a
low wall which enclosed the houses; but the ammunition being nearly
expended, and the enemy close at hand, there was nothing for it but to
limber up again and continue the retirement through the village. At
the further side, however, and forming part of its defences, was a
formidable obstacle in the shape of a ditch fully twelve feet deep,
narrowing towards the bottom; across this Smyth-Windham tried to take
his guns, and the leading horses had just begun to scramble up the
further bank, when one of the wheelers stumbled and fell, with the
result that the shafts broke and the gun stuck fast, blocking the only
point at which there was any possibility of getting the others across.

With a faint hope of saving the guns, I directed Captain