this, the 10th Field Battery
had succeeded in getting their guns along it, and had brought them
safely to Panjkora. But soldiers will accomplish a good deal to get
nearer the enemy. The scenery before the gorge of the river is reached
is gloomy, but grand. Great cliffs tower up precipitously on the further
bank and the path is cut in the face of the rock. The river, which flows
swiftly by, plunges into a narrow cleft about a mile below the bridge,
and disappears among the mountains. It abounds in fish, but is rapid and
dangerous, and while the troops were encamped near it, two gunners lost
their lives by falling in, and being carried down. Indeed, watching the
dead bodies of several camels being swept along, swirled around,
and buffeted against the rocks, it was not hard to understand these
accidents.

At length, the bridge is reached. It is a frail structure, supported
on wire ropes. At each end are gates, flanked by little mud towers. The
battery was established on a knoll to the right, and the long muzzles of
the guns peered through stone embrasures at the opposite hills. It was
round the bases of these hills that much hard fighting took place in the
Chitral campaign. About half a mile beyond the bridge, I was shown the
place where the Guides had been so hard pressed, and for a whole night
had had to stand at bay, their colonel killed, the bridge broken, and
the river in flood, against the tribesmen in overwhelming numbers.

The field telegraph stopped at the bridge-head, and a small tent with a
half-dozen military operators marked the breaking of the slender thread
that connected us, across thousands of miles of sea and land, with
London. Henceforward a line of signal stations with their flickering
helios would be the only links. We were at the end of the wire. I have
often stood at the other and watched the tape machine click off the news
as it arrives; the movements of the troops; the prospects of action; the
fighting; the casualties. How different are the scenes. The club on
an autumn evening--its members grouped anxiously around, discussing,
wondering, asserting; the noise of the traffic outside; the cigarette
smoke and electric lights within. And, only an hour away along the
wire, the field, with the bright sunlight shining on the swirling muddy
waters; the black forbidding rocks; the white tents of the brigade a
mile up the valley; the long streak of vivid green rice crop by the
river; and in the foreground t