had left the works to treat with the Afghan chiefs,
was seized by Akbar Khan and murdered on the spot, his head, with its
green spectacles, being held up in derision to the soldiers within the
works.

The British were now "advised" by the Afghans to go back to India. There
was, in truth, nothing else to do. They were starving where they were.
If they should fight their way to the citadel, they would be besieged
there without food. They must go, whatever the risk or hardships. On
the 6th of January the fatal march began,--a march of four thousand five
hundred soldiers and twelve thousand camp-followers, besides women and
children, through a mountainous country, filled with savage foes, and in
severe winter weather.

The first day's march took them but five miles from the works, the
evacuation taking place so slowly that it was two o'clock in the morning
before the last of the force came up. It had been a march of frightful
conditions. Attacked by the Afghans on every side, hundreds of the
fugitives perished in those first five dreadful miles. As the advance
body waited in the snow for those in the rear to join them, the glare of
flames from the burning cantonments told that the evacuation had been
completed, and that the whole multitude was now at the mercy of its
savage foes. It was evident that they had a frightful gantlet to run
through the fire of the enemy and the winters chilling winds. The snow
through which they had slowly toiled was reddened with blood all the way
back to Cabul. Baggage was abandoned, and men and women alike pushed
forward for their lives, some of them, in the haste of flight, but
half-clad, few sufficiently protected from the severe cold.

The succeeding days were days of massacre and horror. The fierce
hill-tribes swarmed around the troops, attacking them in front, flank,
and rear, pouring in their fire from every point of vantage, slaying
them in hundreds, in thousands, as they moved hopelessly on. The
despairing men fought bravely. Many of the foe suffered for their
temerity. But they were like prairie-wolves around the dying bison; the
retreating force lay helpless in their hands; two new foes took the
place of every one that fell.

Each day's horrors surpassed those of the last. The camp-followers died
in hundreds from cold and starvation, their frost-bitten feet refusing
to support them. Crawling in among the rugged rocks that bordered the
road, they lay there helplessly awaiting deat