It is not surprising, then, that dark and
doubtful as was the future to which they were consigning themselves, the
ladies preferred its risks and chances to the awful certainties which lay
before the doomed column. The Afghan chief had cunningly made it a
condition of his proffer that the husbands should accompany their wives,
and if there was a struggle in the breasts of the former between public
and private duties, the General humanely decided the issue by ordering
them to share the fortunes of their families.
Akbar Khan sent in no supplies, and the march was resumed on the morning
of the both by a force attenuated by starvation, cold, and despair,
diminished further by extensive desertion. After much exertion the
advance, consisting of all that remained of the 44th, the solitary gun,
and a detachment of cavalry, forced a passage to the front through the
rabble of camp followers, and marched unmolested for about two miles
until the Tunghee Tariki was reached, a deep gorge not more than ten feet
wide. Men fell fast in the horrid defile, struck down by the Afghan fire
from the heights; but the pass, if narrow, was short, and the advance
having struggled through it moved on to the halting-place at
Kubbar-i-Jubbar, and waited there for the arrival of the main body. But
that body was never to emerge from out the shambles in the narrow throat
of the Tunghee Tariki.
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