and the attack was broken while yet the advanced ghazis were 500 or 600 yards away. Sniders at that distance told with precision, and to make headway against them was impossible. The bullets searched every yard of open ground, and made even the orchards almost untenable. To the right of the sepoys of the 28th were the 67th and the 92nd Highlanders, waiting with characteristic discipline the order to fire. Through the mist at last appeared a dense mass of men waving swords and knives, shouting their war-cry, and firing incessantly as they advanced. The order came at last for our soldiers to open fire, and the Afghans were then so close that the volleys told with murderous effect. Some of the ghazis were shot within 80 yards of our rifles, so patiently was the attack awaited; while thirty bodies were counted afterwards well within 200 yards’ range. The attack collapsed as suddenly as it had begun, the Afghans saw what execution men in trenches and behind parapets can do with breech-loaders in their hands, and they took cover behind walls and trees, from whence they expended thousands of cartridges, doing us but little damage. Our ammunition was too precious to be needlessly wasted, and only when clusters of men got within range were volleys fired to scatter them. As day broke the two mountain guns, with an 18-pounder and two of F-A Battery in the corner bastion, shelled the villages and orchards, and it was believed that the ghazis were too disheartened to try a second assault. About eleven o’clock, however, after five hours’ skirmishing, they succeeded in getting a few thousand of their more desperate followers together, and tried again to assault our lines. They were driven back more quickly than on the first occasion; and could, indeed, scarcely be said to have advanced 100 yards in their rude formation of attack. Shortly after this they began to waver and to slacken their fire, and when their scouts reported, as no doubt was the case, that a new force was crossing the Logar river, they became a demoralised mob bent upon seeking safety at the earliest opportunity.