out straight across the plain in open
order, and they did not fire.

'This,' said the Colonel of Gurkhas softly, 'is the real attack, as it
should have been delivered. Come on, my children.'

'Ulu-lu-lu-lu!' squealed the Gurkhas, and came down with a joyful
clicking of _kukris_--those vicious Gurkha knives.

On the right there was no rush. The Highlanders, cannily commending
their souls to God (for it matters as much to a dead man whether he
has been shot in a Border scuffle or at Waterloo), opened out and
fired according to their custom, that is to say without heat and
without intervals, while the screw-guns, having disposed of the
impertinent mud fort aforementioned, dropped shell after shell into
the clusters round the flickering green standards on the heights.

'Charrging is an unfortunate necessity,' murmured the Colour-Sergeant
of the right company of the Highlanders. 'It makes the men sweer so,
but I am thinkin' that it will come to a charrge if these black devils
stand much longer. Stewarrt, man, you're firing into the eye of the
sun, and he'll not take any harm for Government ammuneetion. A foot
lower and a great deal slower! What are the English doing? They're
very quiet there in the centre. Running again?'

The English were not running. They were hacking and hewing and
stabbing, for though one white man is seldom physically a match for an
Afghan in a sheepskin or wadded coat, yet, through the pressure of
many white men behind, and a certain thirst for revenge in his heart,
he becomes capable of doing much with both ends of his rifle. The Fore
and Aft held their fire till one bullet could drive through five or
six men, and the front of the Afghan force gave on the volley. They
then selected their men, and slew them with deep gasps and short
hacking coughs, and groanings of leather belts against strained
bodies, and realised for the first time that an Afghan attacked is far
less formidable than an Afghan attacking: which fact old soldiers
might have told them.

But they had no old soldiers in their ranks.

The Gurkhas' stall at the bazar was the noisiest, for the men were
engaged--to a nasty noise as of beef being cut on the block--with the
_kukri_, which they preferred to the bayonet; well knowing how the
Afghan hates the half-moon blade.

As the Afghans wavered, the green standards on the mountain moved down
to assist them in a last rally. This was unwise. The Lancers chafing
in the right gorge had