The little party of a hundred men scrambled over the bank behind which they had been lying and advanced to the attack of the strongly-held village to their front. It was a desperate venture, for the enemy were not only in superior numbers and better armed, but they were firing from behind cover, while the troops which the British had now to lead to the attack had to advance across 200 yards of open ground, exposed to fire for the whole distance, and they were men who had never been in action before. Captain Townshend had served in the expedition sent to relieve Khartoum, and had been present in the battles of Gubat and Abu Klea, where Sir Herbert Stewart and Burnaby lost their lives, and he had taken part in the sharp little Hunza campaign in 1891, but he told me that he had never before been under so hot a fire as that which now met his party as they scrambled over the bank. The Kashmir General Baj Singh, a fine old soldier and gentleman, who was always keen to be in the thickest of a fight, and whose keenness had now led him to the front when by rights he should have been more in rear, was shot down on one side of Captain Townshend, while Major Bhikam Singh, another brave old Kashmir officer, was mortally wounded on the other side. Their leaders fallen, the finest troops in the world would have found it hard to face so terrible a fire, and the raw Kashmir infantry could no longer stand before it. Insensibly they shrank under the fire, then crouched down behind stones, till Captain Townshend finding it impossible to carry the charge home in spite of all his endeavours to get the men on abandoned the attempt, and ordered his men back behind the wall from which they had started. Events had now taken a very serious turn. The British officers were nearly two miles distant from the fort with a handful of disheartened troops in the face of vastly superior numbers of an elated enemy, who were now commencing to overlap them on all sides. The retirement to the fort commenced, and Captain Campbell, even though he was very severely wounded in the knee, mounted a pony and helped to keep the troops in order and steady. This trying manoeuvre was effected by alternate parties, the men dribbling off to the rear by word of command while the remainder kept up a heavy fire to keep off the enemy. Captain Townshend always remained with the last party in order to prevent any panic or disorder arising, and in this way the party reached a house about a mile from the fort, where Mr. Robertson was found rallying men who had retired before, and here a short stand was made, while Mr. Robertson, at great risk and exposed to a heavy fire from the enemy now lining the garden walls and houses on every side, rode back to the fort to bring out fifty of Lieutenant Harley's Sikhs to cover the retirement.