It abounds in fish, but is rapid and
dangerous, and while the troops were encamped near it, two gunners lost
their lives by falling in, and being carried down. Indeed, watching the
dead bodies of several camels being swept along, swirled around, and
buffeted against the rocks, it was not hard to understand these
accidents.
At length, the bridge is reached. It is a frail structure, supported on
wire ropes. At each end are gates, flanked by little mud towers. The
battery was established on a knoll to the right, and the long muzzles of
the guns peered through stone embrasures at the opposite hills. It was
round the bases of these hills that much hard fighting took place in the
Chitral campaign. About half a mile beyond the bridge, I was shown the
place where the Guides had been so hard pressed, and for a whole night
had had to stand at bay, their colonel killed, the bridge broken, and
the river in flood, against the tribesmen in overwhelming numbers.
The field telegraph stopped at the bridge-head, and a small tent with a
half-dozen military operators marked the breaking of the slender thread
that connected us, across thousands of miles of sea and land, with
London.
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