In Ali Mahomed’s fort the prisoners led a life of comparative freedom. They had a spacious garden in which to exercise themselves at certain times. They had the use alike of the walks and of the fruits. They were suffered to bathe in the river. They were permitted to visit, and to receive visits from, their friends in the Balla Hissar. Many of them had the means of borrowing money from the Caubulees; and were able to purchase many necessaries which they had not enjoyed at Budeeabad. Letters and papers from Jellalabad, from the provinces of India, and from old England, were brought to them without interruption. They had much to think about and much to discuss. Intelligence from Jellalabad and intelligence from Caubul came, in some shape, every day. Life was comparatively but little wearisome; there was abundant occupation for the mind, and abundant exercise for the body. True, indeed, it is that many of the party fell sick, and that some died; that their guards were sometimes insolent and extortionate; and that ever and anon there reached them rumours of the intentions of Akbar Khan to carry them off to Toorkistan; but they had much to be thankful for, on the other side, and on the whole, perhaps, they enjoyed greater comfort and happiness, than commonly fall to the lot of the prisoner and the captive in the hands of a barbarous foe. BOOK IX. CHAPTER I. [June-September: 1842.] The Advance from Jellalabad—Instructions of Lord Ellenborough—The Question of Responsibility—Employment of the Troops at Jellalabad—Operations in the Shinwarree Valley—Negotiations for the Release of the Prisoners—The Advance—Mammoo Khail—Jugdulluck—Tezeen—Occupation of Caubul. The summer months passed away, and still left General Pollock at Jellalabad, and General Nott at Candahar. Whether it were the intention of the Governor-General that they should advance upon Caubul, or fall back at once upon Peshawur and Quettah, was a problem of very difficult solution. Such data as were afforded them by the letters of Lord Ellenborough and his secretaries sufficed only to plunge them into a state of still deeper bewilderment and mystification. Every fresh letter seemed to render the obscurity more obscure. The Governor-General’s instructions to Pollock and Nott at this time resembled nothing so much as those given to children in the “game of contraries”—to hold fast when they are ordered to let go, and to let go when they are ordered to hold fast. Lord Ellenborough was, in effect, perpetually telling the generals that when he suggested to them to go forward it was their business to come back.