officers, looking out, with throbbing hearts, through unsteady
telescopes, or with straining eyes tracing the road. Slowly and
painfully, as though horse and rider both were in an extremity of
mortal weakness, the solitary mounted man came reeling, tottering on.
They saw that he was an Englishman. On a wretched, weary pony,
clinging, as one sick or wounded, to its neck, he sat or rather leant
forward; and there were those who, as they watched his progress,
thought that he could never reach, unaided, the walls of Jelalabad. A
shudder ran through the garrison. That solitary horseman looked like
the messenger of death. Few doubted that he was the bearer of
intelligence that would fill their souls with horror and dismay. Their
worst forebodings seemed confirmed. There was the one man who was to
tell the story of the massacre of a great army. A party of cavalry
were sent out to succour him. They brought him in wounded, exhausted,
half-dead. The messenger was Dr Brydon, and he now reported his belief
that he was the sole survivor of an army of some 16,000 men!'[3] From
this wholesale butchery, which we are not disposed to detail, the
women and children, the general, and the husbands of the ladies, were
rescued by Akbar Khan. They were held for a time by the son of Dost
Mahomed in a sort of captivity; where some of them had leisure to
write narratives of their adventures, while others, with an
inconsistence common and entertaining in melodramatic pieces, amused
themselves with fun and frolic!

And what became of Shah Soojah? 'Rising early on the morning, he
arrayed himself in royal apparel, and, accompanied by a small party
of Hindostanees, proceeded under a salute, in a chair of state,
towards his camp, which had been pitched at Seeah-Sungh. But
Soojah-ool-dowlah, the son of the Newab, had gone out before him, and
placed in ambush a party of Jezailchees. As the shah and his followers