Weary, breathless, and suffering from an intense thirst, incident to hot exertion and fierce excitement--a thirst they had neither the means nor the time to allay--their eyes bloodshot, their lips baked, their undressed wounds in many instances streaming with blood, their faces pale as death--the death that was so soon to overtake them all--the handful of Europeans and Guide soldiers maintained the unequal conflict with a heroism that mingled with despair. It was at this crisis in their fate that Daud Shah, a fine old Afghan sirdir, came riding from the Ameer's palace, through the crowds of people, and called upon them 'to desist from their infamous crime!' He was a man above fifty years of age, with a stern face of a decidedly Jewish type, an aquiline nose, and high cheekbones, dark and restless eyes, having beetling brows tufted with grizzly hair, and a long grey beard that descended to his shawl-girdle. But his appearance only added to the rancorous fury of the people and the mutineers. Rushing on him with rage, Mahmoud Shah tore him from his saddle; he was wounded by a bayonet, severely stoned, and borne away to the palace, covered with blood and in a dying condition. Two other officers of high rank--one a sirdir or general--also strove to quell the disturbance, but were fired on and compelled to seek safety in flight. That portion of the Bala Hissar assigned as a Residency was far too large for the little garrison that had then to defend it, and it was now surrounded on its four sides by that ferocious multitude of armed men bent on slaughter and cruelty, led on by an equally frantic band of moollahs. 'They are flinging lighted brands on the roof from the arsenal,' cried some one, and overhead the roar of flames was soon heard as the open upper storey we have described became sheeted with fire. 'If that is the case, a little time will see us all gone to the bow-wows!' cried Robert Wodrow, whom danger always seemed to exhilarate and make more reckless. Despairing of all succour from the false Ameer, and as if eager to die hard, and in doing so to anticipate their doom, the few surviving heroes of the little garrison charged out sword in hand, and plunged--thrusting with the point, and hewing with the edge--into the human sea that filled the court between the Bala Hissar gate, just as night was closing, and there they all perished to a man, save one--perished just as the roof of the Residency came crashing down amid black smoke and crackling flames, thus preserving the bodies of Sir Louis Cavagnari, of Dr. Kelly, and several others from the last insults of a savage enemy.