utation it would be shunned, as the
House of Commons is shunned on a Service night. I have strayed far
away from the Malakand Field Force into the tangled paths of military
controversy, and I must beg the reader to forgive, as he will surely
forget, what has been written.

The fighting described in the last chapter, and the continual drain of
disease, had again filled the field hospitals, and in order to preserve
the mobility of the force, it was decided to send all sick and wounded
down to the base at once. The journey--over 100 miles by road--would
take nearly a fortnight, and the jolting and heat made such an
experience a painful and weary one to injured men. But the stern
necessities of war render these things inevitable, and the desire of the
men to get nearer home soothes much of their suffering. The convoy of
sick and wounded was to be escorted as far as the Panjkora River by the
Royal West Kent, who were themselves in need of some recuperation. To
campaign in India without tents is always a trial to a British regiment;
and when it is moved to the front from some unhealthy station like
Peshawar, Delhi, or Mian Mir, and the men are saturated with fever and
weakened by the summer heats, the sick list becomes long and serious.
Typhoid from drinking surface water, and the other various kinds of
fever which follow exposure to the heats of the day or the chills of
the night, soon take a hundred men from the fighting strength, and the
general of an Indian frontier force has to watch with equal care the
movements of the enemy and the fluctuations of the hospital returns. As
soon, therefore, as Sir Bindon Blood saw that the Mamunds were desirous
of peace, and that no further operations against them were probable, he
sent one of his British regiments to their tents near the Panjkora.

About sixty wounded men from the actions of 30th September and 3rd
October, and the same number of sick, formed the bulk of the convoy. The
slight cases are carried on camels, in cradles made by cutting a native
bedstead in two, and called "Kajawas." The more serious cases are
carried in doolies or litters, protected from the sun by white curtains,
and borne by four natives. Those who are well enough ride on mules. The
infantry escort is disposed along the line with every precaution that
can be suggested, but the danger of an attack upon the long straggling
string of doolies and animals in difficult and broken ground is a very
real and terri