Note 175 — Chapter II

“Several men,” says Pottinger, “received bullets through the hands and arms. One fellow, more fool-hardy than the rest, kept brandishing his huge Afghan knife, after the others had complied with the repeated orders to sheath their weapons, and had the knife destroyed by a bullet, which struck it just above his hand. I had gone down to the spot to see the mine sprung, and was sitting on the banquette with the Wuzeer and a party of chiefs, who, whilst tea was preparing, were bantering the man whose knife was broken, and who came to beg a sword instead, when a bullet came in through a loophole over my head, and, smashing a brick used for stopping it, lodged in Aga Ruhem’s lungs, who was standing opposite—one of the splinters of the brick at the same time wounding him in the face. The poor fellow was an eunuch of Yar Mahomed’s, and was always to be seen wherever any danger was. He died in two or three days. I had been but the moment before looking through the top of the parapet, with my breast resting against the loophole, watching the Persians, who were trying to establish themselves in the crater of the mine, and the Afghans on the counterscarp, who were trying to grapple the gabions and overset them, so that the scene was very interesting; and I had not sat down with the chiefs until Deen Mahomed Khan actually pulled me down by my cloak to listen to the jokes passed on the man who had his knife destroyed; and I thus escaped Aga Ruhem’s bullet.”—[MS. Journal.]