All that stood between Akhbar Khan and the realization of his project was a platoon of the 14th Hants under Lieutenant Gow, a Lewis gun, a dozen Persian irregulars of doubtful fighting quality, and a very unformidable barrier of two rows of {91} barbed wire. The camp was on the edge of a narrow plateau facing the road. In the rear, where this latter became merged in the hills, the smooth slope was like a toboggan run, and the alert Senjabis, if they so wished, might have slid from their hill-top sangars down on to the field of battle. But they held aloof; their day was not yet. We spent an anxious night. Everybody was under arms waiting for the threatened attack. Morning ended our period of suspense and brought the looked-for reinforcements--a squadron of the 14th Hussars under Captain Pope, a couple of guns, an additional platoon of the Hants, as well as the Dunsterville contingent which had originally set out from Baqubah. The "mountain tiger," as Ali Akhbar Khan was called in the imaginative and picturesque vocabulary of the district, had hesitated, and missed his chance. The reinforcing party was very much disappointed at Akhbar's display of irresolution and his reluctance to fight. Some amongst the bolder spirits contemplated calling upon him in his mountain lair. But that was not to be. When the "tiger" did spring later on, and sought to cut up a British column, he received the lesson of his life. But our party was not there to share in the glory of his undoing. {92} CHAPTER X KIRIND TO KARMANSHAH Pillage and famine--A land of mud--The Chikar Zabar Pass--Wandering dervishes--Poor hotel accommodation--A "Hunger Battalion"--A city of the past. From Kirind to Kermanshah, our next stage, is about sixty miles. For the most part it is dreary, barren country, with a few isolated villages astride the line of march. The whole land had been skinned bare of supplies by Turk and Russian, and it was now in the throes of famine. There was a good deal of similarity in the methods of these successive invaders. They commandeered unscrupulously and without payment, and what they could not consume or carry off they destroyed. There was no seed wheat, and consequently no crops had been sown. Many tillers of the soil had fled for their lives; those who had remained were dying of hunger in this war-ravaged region. The arable land which is noted for its fertility was forlorn and neglected; no plough had touched its soil since the passing of the war storm, and its abandoned furrows were temporarily tenanted by wandering crows struggling to gain a precarious livelihood. It was desolation and ruin everywhere. {93}