could be mustered for the duty were despatched to bring a supply of the greedily-desired luxury, escorted by a party of irregular horse. But the hope which, for a time, supported the spirits of the sufferers, proved fallacious: not only did the information of the guides prove false, but the guides themselves turned out to be treacherous. They conducted the water-party to a place where they were surrounded by the Beloochees, and killed, with the exception of a few, who cut their way through, and bore to their perishing companions the fearful intelligence of the failure of their mission, and the destruction of the greater part of those who had proceeded on it.
What now was to be done? The enemy had been beaten back with severe loss, but the pass was yet in their possession; and the heaps of the dead which they had left on the field scarcely affected their strength, though the repulse they had received might have damped their spirit. They yet numbered several thousands; and for a few hundred fainting men to fight their way through such a force, over ground almost impassable when without a foe, was obviously hopeless. Moreover, could success have been hoped for, neither the stores nor the guns could have been carried forward, for the artillery horses had been sent for water and had never returned, while the camel-drivers and dooly-bearers, with an Oriental instinct of disaster, had fled, plundering the commissaries of all they could carry away. There was nothing left, therefore, but to relinquish the hope of throwing supplies into Kahun, and to fall back.
But even this step, the only one practicable, involved a vast sacrifice. The safe return of the men was all that the most sanguine could hope for : guns, stores, camp-equipage, all were to be abandoned, for the means of transporting them did not exist, even had no enemy been watching the movements of the devoted party. The guns were spiked, and the melancholy march in retrogression commenced. "We moved off," says Major Clibborn, "with as much quietness as the frantic state of the men
