m he had fined and
whose forts he had destroyed forsook the pursuits of peace and declared
themselves ready to follow him to the gates of hell if necessary. Of
them he chose out those who already had relatives or fellow-clansmen in
his irregular corps to accompany him at once, leaving the rest under
the command of his subordinate Carpenter at Dera Galib, nominally for
drill, but also to serve as a check upon the disaffected artillery.

With his untrustworthy Granthis and his half-trained auxiliaries he
crossed the Tindar at Kardi, as he had intended, and employed the
former, to their intense disgust, in throwing up rough entrenchments
round the camp. The Darwanis he sent out in raiding-parties (this
operation appeared under the more decorous name of "making
reconnaissances" in his reports to Ranjitgarh), with orders not to
penetrate more than a certain distance into the country, but to do as
much damage as possible, and bring back supplies for the force. These
tactics had the result he anticipated. Sher Singh's army, which was
organising itself, with much squabbling and mutual recrimination, for a
dash across the frontier, found its rear threatened, and perceived that
unless the capital was to be left open to attack, these impudent
intruders must be driven back to their own side of the river. The
matter was complicated by the speedy appearance of the Habshiabad
troops in the south of the state, where Gerrard seized one of the
riverside towns, and held it by means of Rukn-ud-din's men and the most
serviceable of the Nawab's batteries of artillery, while he laboured
day and night, with Sadiq Ali, almost beside himself with joy,
hindering as much as helping him, to get the army into the field.
Happily the problem was not so complicated as it would have been in the
case of European troops, and the Nawab and his soldiers alike would
have scouted the idea of obtaining supplies otherwise than from the
country traversed, but weapons for the men and transport for the guns,
and ammunition for both, were necessaries difficult to improvise on the
spur of the moment. The Habshiabadis took the field at last, in a
state that would have made a European commander tear his hair, and
Gerrard hustled them on, blooding them by a smart little engagement
with a force sent by Sher Singh's nearest governor to dispute their
passage. The Rani joined them with every man she could bring as soon
as they were ready to cross the Ghara, but left