'There it was I contrived to join our 44th, or what remained of it, for in one group 200 of it had fallen; and then I learned those dreadful tidings, which made every heart in Britain throb, that the women of the army, among them my Mabel and her cousin, had been surrendered to the Afghans! '"In all the world's history," said Jack Villars, "there will be no retreat recorded like this! That from Moscow had its survivors; this from Cabul will have _none_! But have a cheroot, old fellow; it is all I have saved out of my baggage." 'The terrible march was continued, and on every side the rocks re-echoed the cries of "Death to the Feringhees! Death to the infidel dogs!" while the wounded were always stripped and horribly mutilated. After a brief halt, at which some ponies were shot, flayed, and eaten raw, on we struggled again, on and on, under a shower of shot that decimated us at every step, until we reached a place called Jugdulluck, by which time every officer of rank had perished; and there, on a knoll, under Jack Villars, myself, and another, the wretched survivors, men of all arms, made a last despairing stand against the enemy. '"Keep by me, Clinton!" cried Villars, brandishing his sword; "we can die but once!" He had barely spoken ere he fell forward on his face, choking and dying, with a ball in his chest. 'Cheering wildly, we stood shoulder to shoulder, as if to welcome death; many of us faint and bloody with open wounds; but showers of matchlock-balls rained on us, and the roll of death increased as the men fell across each other in heaps. 'The sudden fury with which we resisted here checked even the ardour of the hordes that assailed us, and we were permitted to struggle down the pass, leaving the dead or the dying at every step, till the 13th of January, when _twenty_ officers and _sixty_ privates, the sole survivors of Elphinstone's army, unable to proceed further, made a halt on a knoll at Gundamuck, near a grove of cypress-trees. 'To all this violation of the laws of war, this terrible treachery and lust of blood, was added a sense of deadly horror as to _what_ would be the fate of our gently nurtured European women at the mercy of men so savage. Imagination ran riot, the heart grew still, and we could but hope that ere this, death had put an end to the sufferings of all. '"My poor Mabel!" I could but gasp, rather than sigh, at the thought of her. 'Our ammunition was gone, we were too weak to resist with the bayonet, and, led by Zemaun Khan, the enemy burst in among us--a sanguinary mob--and with the knife alone slew every man there but myself and two other officers, who, being mounted, broke through, sword in hand, though all more or less wounded, and escaped by the speed of our horses; yet close at our heels came a score of mounted Afghans, Zemaun among the number.