Carrying this message with him, Pottinger left the city, accompanied by a small party of Afghans. They attended him some distance beyond the walls; and then shouting out their good wishes, left him to pursue his journey. A single attendant, Syud Ahmed, and a cossid went with him. Pushing on through narrow, tortuous lanes, bounded by high mud walls, and every moment expecting to be saluted by a bullet from some zealous sentinel posted on his line of road, the young English officer pushed on towards the Persian camp. “I kept a good look-out,” he wrote in his journal; “and fortunately I did so, as, through one of the gaps in the wall, I observed the Persians running to occupy the road we were following. I therefore stopped and made Syud Ahmed wave his turban, for want of a better flag of truce. The Persians, on this, came towards us in a most irregular manner—so much so that, if twenty horsemen had been with me, the whole Persian picket might have been cut off. Some were loading as they ran; and one valiant hero, who came up in the rear after he had ascertained who we were, to prevent danger, I suppose, loaded his musket and fixed his bayonet. They were a most ragged-looking set, and, from their dress and want of beard, looked inferior to the Afghans. They were delighted at my coming; and the English appeared great favourites among them. A fancy got abroad that I was come with proposals to surrender, which made the great majority lose all command over themselves, at the prospect of revisiting their country so soon. They crowded round; some patting my legs, and others my horse, whilst those who were not successful in getting near enough, contented themselves with Syud Ahmed and the cossid—the whole, however, shouting, ‘Afreen! Afreen! Khoosh amedeed! Anglish hameshah dostan-i Shah-in-Shah.’” (”Bravo! Bravo! Welcome! The English were always friends of the King-of-Kings.”)[165] The officer who commanded the picket, a major in the Persian army who had served under Major Hart, who knew all the English officers recently connected with the Persian Court or the Persian army, and who had, moreover, been the custodian of Yar Mahomed when the Wuzeer was a prisoner at Meshid, conducted Pottinger to the guard-room. Apologising, on the plea of military necessity, for any interference with his free progress, he stated that discipline required that the emissary should be taken to the Major-General commanding the attack. It happened that General Samson,[166] of the Russian regiment, was the officer in command. The way to the General’s quarters was “through gardens and vineyards, in which not even the roots of the trees and shrubs were left.” The General received the British officer with much courtesy, conceiving him at first to be an Afghan; and was greatly surprised to find that he was in the presence of an European soldier. Sending for tea and kalyans (pipes), he regaled his guest with becoming courtesy, and then sent him on in safety to the Persian camp.