On the following day, Nott having excused himself on the plea of ill health from visiting Pollock in his camp, Pollock, waiving the distinction of his superior rank, called upon his brother-general. The conversation which ensued related mainly to the question of the despatch of the brigade in aid of the recovery of the British prisoners. Nott had made up his mind on the subject. He was not to be moved from his first position. There were few besides himself who considered the arguments which he advanced to be of the overwhelming and conclusive character which Nott himself believed them to be; and it was, at all events, sufficiently clear, that as it was of primal importance on such a service to lose the least possible amount of time, it was desirable to detach a brigade from Nott’s camp, in preference to one from Pollock’s, if only because the former was some ten miles nearer to Bameean than the latter. Nott was inflexible. Government, he said, “had thrown the prisoners overboard”—why then should he rescue them? He would obey the orders of his superior officer, but only under protest. So Pollock returned to camp, and delegated to another officer the honourable service which Nott had emphatically declined. Sir Robert Sale was not likely to decline it. Though his own heroic wife had not been one of the captives, every feeling of the soldier and the man would have responded to the appeal. So Sale took out with him a brigade from the Jellalabad army, and pushed on in pursuit of Shakespear and the Kuzzilbashes. But already had the release of the prisoners been effected. They had accomplished their own liberation. Sale met them with Shakespear and the Kuzzilbash escort on their way to Pollock’s camp. The story which they had to tell was this. On the afternoon of the 25th of August the prisoners,[309] who had already received a general intimation that they were to be carried off to Bameean, but who had still ventured to hope that some efforts might be made by the chiefs in our interests to release them, were warned by Captain Troup, who had just returned from an interview with the Sirdar, to prepare for the journey towards the Hindoo-Koosh. Soon after sunset a guard of three hundred men arrived to escort them. Their ponies, camels, and litters were brought, and an hour or two before midnight they started upon their dreary journey.