Both officers had now unexpectedly obtained their release. They had suffered the greatest hardships, and lived in daily peril of their lives, but they spoke with something like enthusiasm of the good treatment they had received at Umra Khan's hands. It was sometimes no easy matter for that chief to keep off those who had wished to injure the British officers; and on one occasion after Lieutenant Edwardes had left, Fowler had had an anxious time owing to the presence of many fanatics from outside striving to gain an entrance into the fort. There had nearly been a pitched fight between Umra Khan's men and these wild ruffians, and a few days afterwards when I stood with him in Umra Khan's fort, Lieutenant Fowler, standing in the doorway of the house he had occupied as a prisoner only three days before, had shown me the spot where these fanatics came clamouring round his guard, and trying to obtain access to him. But Umra Khan succeeded in protecting him throughout. He gave back to Lieutenant Edwardes his own sword which had been seized at Reshun, and which Umra Khan had received as a present from Chitral; and he promised to obtain Lieutenant Fowler's also, if it could be found. "We both consider," say the British officers, at the close of their report, "that Umra Khan treated us very well indeed, and that he never intended to be the direct cause of injury to us under any circumstance." So ended the wonderful adventures of these two British subalterns. When they were holding out at Reshun, and making their last stand in a mere village house against overwhelming numbers of the enemy; and again, when they were treacherously captured by a deceitful foe; and lastly, when they were in the hands of men in the fever-heat of rebellion against the British, no one would have supposed that they could ever have escaped alive. But they had survived every peril, and were now once more in safety among their fellow-countrymen. How General Low advanced to the Relief has now to be related. CHAPTER III GENERAL LOW'S ADVANCE