ve them up like sheep. The news soon spread that food was
going cheap, and they didn't require much driving. The flour was in a
bin about six feet square, by four feet high, and only a small round
hole at the top. We soon enlarged that so that a man could get in. I
furnished him with a wooden shovel evidently meant for the job, and gave
the order for the men to file in. As each man came in he received a
shovelful, into his skirt tail, and then had to march round a box and
out of the door. It took some two hours to finish the job, and even then
the flour was not expended, while the grain, of which there was some in
more bins, had not been touched. I left the guard over the door, and got
back in time to get orders out for the next day's march, by which time
Cobbe and the rearguard had come in, dinner was ready, and it had begun
to rain.

We were camped in front of the fort, the men in a field, ourselves
alongside on a praying place overlooking the river. The Levies were on
the right, the ammunition and stores piled by the quarter-guard, the
coolies locked up in the fort, and the pickets all right, so we turned
in. Towards morning the rain began to fall heavily, so I pulled my
bedding under the fort gateway, where I found Stewart and Oldham had
already got the best places; however, I found a spot between two levies,
and finished the night comfortably enough. We had not done a bad day's
work on the whole. Marched from seven in the morning till six at night,
covering some twenty miles of hilly country, made a bridge, and occupied
one of the chief forts of the country. Cobbe, with the rearguard, had
had the poorest time, but he had had the satisfaction of raiding into
Buni.

We woke up next morning to find a dull grey sky and the rain pouring
down, everything damp and miserable, and the cook having a fight with
the wood to make it burn. Our proposed march for the day being only a
short one, we did not start till eight A.M. As we were moving off, a
Kashmir sepoy turned up who had been one of Edwardes' party, and whose
life had been saved by a friendly villager who gave him some Chitrali
clothes. I told him to fall in with the company, and he came down with
us to Chitral. The remainder of the flour was distributed among the
sepoys, and we took as much grain as we could find carriage for, but it
was very little.

A small convoy of Punyal Levies joined us that day; they had been
foraging up the Yarkhun valley, and had been sen