ng behind walls and standing
on the defence. A shot rang out on the outskirts of our camp at three
o'clock in the morning, and in a moment they were upon us. It was
reckoned that there were fifteen thousand of them engaged from first to
last in this battle, whereas we were under two thousand combatants. We
had seven hundred of the Imperial Service troops, four companies of
Gurkhas, three hundred men of the Punjab Infantry, three companies of the
Oxfordshires, besides cavalry, mountain batteries and Irregulars. The
attack was unexpected. We bestrode the road, but Shere Ali brought his
men in by an old disused Buddhist road, running over the hills on our
right hand, and in the darkness he forced his way through our lines into
a little village in the heart of our position. He seized the bazaar and
held it all that day, a few houses built of stone and with stones upon
the roof which made them proof against our shells. Meanwhile the slopes
on both sides of the valley were thronged with Chiltis. They were armed
with jezails and good rifles stolen from our troops, and they had some
old cannon--sher bachas as they are called. Altogether they caused us
great loss, and towards evening things began to look critical. They had
fortified and barricaded the bazaar, and kept up a constant fire from it.
At last a sapper named Manders, with half a dozen Gurkhas behind him, ran
across the open space, and while the Gurkhas shot through the loop holes
and kept the fire down, Manders fixed his gun cotton at the bottom of the
door and lighted the fuse. He was shot twice, once in the leg, once in
the shoulder, but he managed to crawl along the wall of the houses out of
reach of the explosion, and the door was blown in. We drove them out of
that house and finally cleared the bazaar after some desperate fighting.
Shere Ali was in the thick of it. He was dressed from head to foot in
green, and was a conspicuous mark. But he escaped unhurt. The enemy drew
off for the night, and we lay down as we were, dog-tired and with no
fires to cook any food. They came on again in the morning, clouds of
them, but we held them back with the gatlings and the maxims, and towards
evening they again retired. To-day nothing has happened except the
arrival of an envoy with an arrogant letter from Shere Ali, asking why we
are straying inside the borders of his country 'like camels without
nose-rings.' We shall show him why to-morrow. For to-morrow we attack the
fort on