'Success shows the hand of God, and of Mahomet the Prophet, blessed be their names!' he added. His arrival at the fort was the signal for a species of ovation among his followers, who mustered some hundreds, all villainous but picturesque tatterdemalions, whose arms were as varied as the fashion and colours of their costume. Many had girdles of leather, from which hung bags for bullets, slugs, and flints, powder-horns and cases for cartridges. Others had cummerbunds, in which were stuck pistols, daggers, charahs, and British bayonets in such numbers that it would have been puzzling to find room for one weapon more. In addition to all this paraphernalia, every man had a tulwar, and a juzail, or flint or match-lock rifle, in his hand. Colville was compelled to dissemble his hatred and horror of those who had so wantonly slaughtered his brave companions, many of whose bright, joyous, and handsome English faces came so painfully to memory at that time, all lying cold and gashed and bloody among the ruins of the Residency; and that horror was blended with a great disgust of his host and protector, when he recalled the tragedy his treachery was supposed to have brought to pass with the squadron of the 10th Hussars; that he was a spy who had imposed upon himself at Jellalabad, and had led the Ameer's rebel tribes against us on more than one occasion; but with all this, policy, and his own personal safety, and hope of ultimate freedom compelled him to dissemble. 'Are you thirsty, sahib?' was the first question Mahmoud asked him on quitting his saddle. 'Yes; dying with it! Who could be otherwise after the horrors and exertion of the past day?' exclaimed Colville. 'Drink, then--the commands of the Prophet are nothing to you,' said Mahmoud, as he gave him a large cup filled with Cabul wine (which has a flavour not unlike full-bodied Madeira), and with it a bunch of the grapes of Ghuznee, which are greatly superior to those that grow in the plain of Cabul; and Colville, half-sinking with exhaustion caused by bodily fatigue and fierce over-excitement, thought he had never had refreshment more grateful and acceptable. Built of mud and sun-dried bricks, the fort of Mahmoud was strong and spacious; it was square, with a squat, round tower at each angle and a keep in the centre, well loopholed for musketry, armed with jingals, and those huge swivel blunderbusses named zumbooracks, which, as firearms, are often as perilous to those who work them as to those at whom they are levelled. The fort had two gates, in its eastern and western faces; these were protected by demi-bastions, and there was a moat, once filled by the Cabul, but now dry, neglected, and overgrown by vines and orange-trees.