And now it was that the gallant commander of 'the Gay Gordons,' who were still advancing, won his Victoria Cross, as he stormed the crowded hills in person. 'Advancing with two companies of his regiment,' says the _London Gazette_, 'he came upon a body of the enemy, strongly posted, and outnumbering his force by eighteen to one. His men being much exhausted, and immediate action necessary, Major White took a rifle, and going on by himself, shot the leader of the enemy.' The fall of this personage, who was deemed invulnerable, so intimidated the enemy that they fled down the mountain side, while the Highlanders crowned its crest with a ringing cheer, and then, plunging with their bayonets into the dark defile of the Sung-i-Navishta, they captured the four mountain guns, the horses of which lay disembowelled, dead, or dying in the limber traces. So swift was the rush of the Gordon Highlanders that they had only nine casualties at this point. With the Albany Highlanders in the van, General Baker pushed along the road towards Chardeh, the 5th Ghoorkas, 5th Punjaubees, and 23rd Pioneers following them, till the whole were opposed on strong and precipitous ground by four thousand Afghans ranged under six large and brightly-coloured standards. Upward and onward went our troops under a withering rifle fire, the echoes of which reverberated a hundredfold among the hills, as they were tossed back from peak to peak. For two hours the fight went on, our troops loading and firing with great coolness and deliberation; and then was seen the fearful triumph of the breechloading weapon of precision when properly sighted, for each successive row of swarthy men, as they crowned the ridges of rock, was mown down by a deadly fire, as wheat goes prone to the earth before the scythe of the mower, till after a time it seemed that scarcely a man stood up alive after the delivery of these thundering tempests of lead. The deadly Gatling guns (the pepper castors, as the soldiers named them) proved of little use, owing to the acute angle of elevation; but at last the heights were taken in rear by a flank movement of the Gordon Highlanders, who, with colours flying and all their pipes playing, came storming up the steep slopes, and, crowning the summits, swept the enemy away, or all that remained of them. By four o'clock the Afghans were everywhere in full flight to Cabul, with the loss of many colours, twenty pieces of cannon, and a host of killed and wounded. Strong pickets were posted for the night, as the Ghilzies and Mahmoud Shah's Ghazis were hovering about. The troops bivouacked, as the tents and baggage were all packed for the advance to Cabul on the morrow.