The muskets of
his men could not retaliate, and the skirmishers he threw forward to the
brow of his hill could not endure the Afghan fire. Shelton's single gun
maintained a hot and telling fire on the Afghan masses on the opposite
hill, and baulked an attempt against his right flank made by the Afghan
cavalry swarming in the outer plain; but when its vent became too hot for
the gunners to serve it, the dullest comprehension became alive to the
folly of sending a single gun into the field.
Shelton's men, falling fast though they were, and faint with fatigue and
thirst, yet had endured for hours a fusillade to which they could not
reply, when a body of Afghan fanatics suddenly sprang up out of the
gorge, swept back with their fire the few skirmishers who had been still
holding the brow of the hill, and planted their flag within thirty yards
of the front of the nearer of the squares. Shelton offered a large reward
to the man who should bring it in, but there was no response. In a
passion of soldierly wrath, the veteran commanded a bayonet charge; not a
man sprang forward at the summons which British soldiers are wont to
welcome with cheers. The cowed infantry remained supine, when their
officers darted forward and threw stones into the faces of the enemy; the
troopers heard but obeyed not that trumpet-call to 'Charge!' which so
rarely fails to thrill the cavalryman with the rapture of the fray.
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