advance to vindicate our honour as far less perilous than a retreat without the prisoners, whom his conscience forbade him to leave behind. 'God grant it may not be a disastrous affair!' — was Lawrence's comment, in a letter to Clerk, on a piece of news which Clerk himself shrank from telling in plain words to Sher Singh's foreign minister at Lahore. His tongue, he wrote, 'had been tied by shame,' and he 'thanked God that the candles burnt very dim,' while he was letting the Sikh minister 'discover the truth[1].'
At Kandahár the order to retreat came, said Rawlinson, like a thunderbolt on himself and his noble chief. Wymer's splendid brigade of Sepoys had just been clearing the way across the Khojak for England's advance, at Nott's orders, from Quetta to Kandahár. On the 19th of May Wymer started again at the head of a strong column to bring off Craigie's garrison and destroy the works of Khelát-i-Ghilzai. Meanwhile Nott himself prepared, like a good soldier, to obey orders which seemed to leave him no discretion. He was still waiting for further supplies of carriage from below, when a letter of June 1 from Allahábád left him free to remain a few months longer at Kandahár. Another letter of the same date assumed that Pollock would be compelled by want of carriage and other causes to postpone his retreat until October. It was further suggested that Pollock might employ the interval in making 'sallies' upon the enemy around Jalálábád, so as to 'create a strong desire' on their
- ↑ Afghan Papers; Edwardes; Kaye.
