gasp
ere trusting again to the word of an Afghan. When the command came to
surrender he refused to obey, and it is recorded that he "drove the
enemy thrice back beyond the walls at the point of the bayonet, before
he would listen to the order given him to make his company lay down
their arms." Then, with bitter tears, he gave up his sword, and
allowed himself to be made prisoner.

Of the five months' captivity at Ghuzni, from March to August 1842, we
learn most from Lieutenant Crawford's narrative. From the first the
prisoners were treated miserably. The British officers--ten in
number--were confined in a small room "only 18 feet by 13," and for
several weeks deprived of any change of clothing. What possessions
they had were taken from them by their guards; watches, money, and
jewellery, and even their pocket-knives, thus being lost to them.

Only one officer succeeded in retaining a cherished trinket, and this
was Nicholson himself. Captain Trotter, who records the incident,[1]
quotes from a letter sent by Nicholson to his mother in which the
writer says, "I managed to preserve the little locket with your hair in
it . . . and I was allowed to keep it, because, when ordered to give it
up, I lost my temper and threw it at the soldier's head, which was
certainly a thoughtless and head-endangering act. However, he seemed
to like it, for he gave strict orders that the locket was not to be
taken from me."

The severities of the confinement increased when in April news came of
the death of Shah Soojah at the hands of an assassin, and the little
prison in the citadel became almost a second "Black Hole of Calcutta."
The one window was shut and darkened, making the air of the room
unbearable. To add to the horror of the situation, Colonel Palmer was
now cruelly tortured before his comrades' eyes, one of his feet being
twisted by means of a tent peg and rope. This was done in the hope
that he or some one of his fellow-captives would reveal the
hiding-place of a phantom "four lakhs of rupees," which the Afghans
declared the British had buried in the vicinity.

But in June came a change for the better. The prisoners were now
allowed to sleep out in the open courtyard in the _postins_, or rough
sheepskin coats, supplied them. Two months later they learned that
they were to be sent to Cabul, where Dost Mahomed's son, Akbar Khan,
was keeping captive Lady Sale, Mrs. Sturt, George Lawrence, Vincent
Eyre, and other Europ