Nott was a narrower man than Pollock. When he got his orders
he regarded them as strictly binding, no matter how unpalatable the
injunctions. 'I shall not lose a moment,' he wrote, 'in making
arrangements to carry out my orders, without turning to the right or the
left, and without inquiring into the reasons for the measures enjoined,
whatever our own opinions or wishes may be.' He reluctantly began
preparations for withdrawal. Carriage was ordered up from Quetta, and a
brigade was despatched to withdraw the garrison of Khelat-i-Ghilzai, and
to destroy the fort which Craigie had so long and valiantly defended.
It would be tedious to detail the vacillations, the obscurities, and the
tortuosities of Lord Ellenborough's successive communications to his two
Generals in Afghanistan. Pollock had been permitted to remain about
Jellalabad until the autumn should bring cooler marching weather. Nott
had been detained at Candahar by the necessity for crushing menacing
bodies of tribal levies, but as July waned his preparations for
withdrawal were all but complete. On the 4th of that month Lord
Ellenborough wrote to him, reiterating injunctions for his withdrawal
from Afghanistan, but permitting him the alternatives of retiring by the
direct route along his line of communications over Quetta and Sukkur, or
of boxing the compass by the curiously circuitous 'retirement' _via_
Ghuznee, Cabul, and Jellalabad.
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