brigade with a net of safety. Thus quietly falling back, and meeting
wild charges with ball and bayonet, he kept the open valley till all the
force had safely passed the defile of exit. Then, while the last of his
infantry got safely to commanding posts on the lower slopes, he himself,
with the ready resource of the born fighter, changed his game, and from
the patient rôle of the steady infantry commander, became a cavalry
leader. Mounting his horse and calling on the Guides' cavalry to follow
him, he suddenly charged the astonished enemy, and hurling them back
with slaughter secured for the rest of his men a peaceful retirement.
But before they laid themselves on the hard ground, this paladin of the
fight and his staunch warriors had spent eighteen hours in desperate
warfare with little food and no water.

So far as the records show this was the first occasion on which Hodson
had led a cavalry charge, and was an auspicious opening to a cavalry
career of remarkable brilliancy,--a career which was brought to a brave,
but untimely end, only four years later before the walls of Lucknow.

Amongst other historic figures who watched this fight, and who added
their generous meed of praise, were John Lawrence, the saviour of the
Punjab, who later, as Lord Lawrence, was Viceroy of India, Major Herbert
Edwardes, now Commissioner of Peshawur, who as a subaltern had won two
pitched battles before Mooltan, and Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Napier,
afterwards Lord Napier of Magdala and Commander-in-Chief of the Army in
India.




CHAPTER V