The greatest force of the insurgent Afghans was in Mahommed Khan's fort, which stood nine hundred yards distant from the cantonment guns; but these, being only nine-pounders, were useless for breaching purposes; and as this fort commands the road that leads to the city and the Bala Hissar, supplies from that quarter were completely cut off; and so were they from every other point save the village of Beymaru, where they were procured at vast cost; and when that source failed--our troops, who with their camp-followers, the necessity and the curse of every Indo-British army, made up six and twenty thousand souls penned within the cantonments--the threat of Ackbar, that our horses would yet gnaw each other's tails and the tent-pegs, would become terribly true, unless a successful retreat through the passes were achieved; but for that movement, who now could trust to the promises, the honour, or the humanity of the hostile and exulting Afghans? Though formed into innumerable petty septs, like the clans of the Scottish Highlands, these people are attached more to the community than the chief of it; and though divided by many bitter quarrels among themselves, they were united enough in their hatred of all Kaffirs and Feringhees, and in the hope of getting all their women and property as spoil. Like a Scottish clan of old, an Afghan tribe never refuses the rights of hospitality to a native suppliant. The fugitive who flies from his clan, even though stained with blood, is protected by the tribe upon whose mercy he casts himself, and war to the death would ensue rather than surrender him. All these little republics were now amalgamated for two purposes--the destruction of Shah Sujah and his family, and the expulsion or destruction of our little army that had enthroned him. No one ever ventured beyond the secure walls of the cantonment now, and every other day shots were exchanged between the sentinels and scouting-parties of Afghan horsemen who rode between the forts, brandishing their sabres or matchlocks in angry bravado; and now and then the artillery tried a little practice with their nine-pounders on Mahommed Khan's fort. Nor were the Shah's Gholandazees, under his Topshee Bashee, or General of the Ordnance, in the Bala Hissar quite idle; thus almost nightly there floated above the city a red light, that brought forth tower and dome in dark relief, as the gleam of musketry and cannon fell on the atmosphere; the smoke of gunpowder at night is always somewhat of a red tint. The ladies had got over much of their squeamishness about the discharge of firearms. Poor things, they were learning fast to look, almost without shrinking, on the fall of friend and foe, nor to wink at the flash of a musket, even those who had once shared the old dame's idea with regard to such implements, that, "whether loaded or unloaded, they were apt to go off."