a
steady rest at seven hundred yards, flicked out the brains of a
private seated by the fire. This robbed them of their peace for a
night, and was the beginning of a long-range fire carefully calculated
to that end. In the daytime they saw nothing except an unpleasant puff
of smoke from a crag above the line of march. At night there were
distant spurts of flame and occasional casualties, which set the whole
camp blazing into the gloom and, occasionally, into opposite tents.
Then they swore vehemently and vowed that this was magnificent, but
not war.

Indeed it was not. The Regiment could not halt for reprisals against
the sharpshooters of the countryside. Its duty was to go forward and
make connection with the Scotch and Gurkha troops with which it was
brigaded. The Afghans knew this, and knew too, after their first
tentative shots, that they were dealing with a raw regiment.
Thereafter they devoted themselves to the task of keeping the Fore and
Aft on the strain. Not for anything would they have taken equal
liberties with a seasoned corps--with the wicked little Gurkhas, whose
delight it was to lie out in the open on a dark night and stalk their
stalkers--with the terrible, big men dressed in women's clothes, who
could be heard praying to their God in the night-watches, and whose
peace of mind no amount of 'sniping' could shake--or with those vile
Sikhs, who marched so ostentatiously unprepared and who dealt out such
grim reward to those who tried to profit by that unpreparedness. This
white regiment was different--quite different. It slept like a hog,
and, like a hog, charged in every direction when it was roused. Its
sentries walked with a footfall that could be heard for a quarter of a
mile, would fire at anything that moved--even a driven donkey--and
when they had once fired, could be scientifically 'rushed' and laid
out a horror and an offence against the morning sun. Then there were
camp-followers who straggled and could be cut up without fear. Their
shrieks would disturb the white boys, and the loss of their services
would inconvenience them sorely.

Thus, at every march, the hidden enemy became bolder and the regiment
writhed and twisted under attacks it could not avenge. The crowning
triumph was a sudden night-rush ending in the cutting of many
tent-ropes, the collapse of the sodden canvas, and a glorious knifing
of the men who struggled and kicked below. It was a great deed, neatly
carried out, and it sho