the principal tent, a few feet above the apex, the American flag displayed its stars and stripes, flickering in the quietly drifting breeze. There were no villages in sight but the curling smoke told of many abodes, and the tinkling bells of the flocks that fed unheedingly in the waste, broke the desolation of the scene. In the midst of that wild landscape, the flag of America seemed a dreamy illusion of the imagination, but it was the harbinger of enterprise which distance, space and time had not appalled, for the undaunted sons of Columbia are second to no people in the pursuit of adventure where ever the world is trodden by man.
Waiting anxiously for news from Tak, Harlan decided to hold a dress parade of his troops. ‘A hundred men in a single rank dressed in the costume of Rohillahs, armed with long matchlocks sloped over their left shoulder, Hindustani swords and shields, some with the addition of pistols thrust into the waist belt and a few with blunderbusses.’ To the right of the line, in rather more regimental order, the uniformed sepoys were drawn up, with musket and bayonet. His officers, Harlan observed, were also a mixed bag: ‘Two Europeans in military habits and forage caps with English broadswords suspended from their belts attended in advance of the line, accompanied by a portly Rohillah minus the left hand.’
Harlan studied Gul Khan’s expression, and did not like what he saw. The mercenary ‘gazed wistfully towards the mountains, his bleared right eye partially closed, as he stood grasping the stump of his arm in his hand’. Gul Khan’s anxiety seemed to have affected the troops, for ‘silent expectation and enquiring glances amongst the men expressed apprehension and doubt’.
Dismissing the troops, Harlan summoned Gul Khan into his tent. ‘Gool Khan,’ he began, ‘you are an old soldier and if report speaks truly, a brave man. My confidence in you has been unbounded. To you as a native acquainted with the country and the people I submitted the direction of my will.’ Why, Harlan demanded, had the Rohillah turned down the opportunity to launch an assault on Tak? ‘Had you not discountenanced my determination to proceed in person to attack, Sirwa Khan would now have been my prisoner, the fortress in our possession, the King proclaimed and the whole country forthwith up in arms for the royal cause.’
Gul Khan’s self-defence was a masterpiece of ‘querulous loquacity’, rising in a crescendo. ‘Death to the King’s enemies and may his salt become dirt in the mouths of traitors! Tell me where death is the reward of duty, and I swear by your salt, an instant’s hesitation shall not delay the execution of Your Highness’s will. Now, this instant, speak but the word and the Saheb’s slave is ready!’
But Harlan had by now heard enough of Gul Khan’s belligerent bombast. ‘’Tis too late,’ he said, glumly. ‘I apprehend the scheme has failed, for good news would have reached our camp quickly if Tak has fallen. This long silence can proceed only from hesitating cowardice.’ Gul Khan said nothing, but ‘raised his arms in an attitude of respectful supplication, his right hand grasping the stump of his mutilated limb’, and backed out of the tent.
Harlan’s gloomy prediction proved only too accurate. The next morning, a message arrived from the Rohillah officer at Talc he was ready to order the mutiny, but only if Harlan would send his regular soldiers and force Sirwa Khan to pay their arrears. Harlan exploded. ‘Traitors and cowards! I offered to enlist them! Do you see those mountains before us? Can such wretches, who are unable to seize an empty fortress, scale those heights and force the fortresses in possession of savage robbers? They have proved themselves women in the affairs of men. Such retainers I need not. I know their value.’ He gave the order to march within the hour: he would storm Tak himself.
Still spitting with rage, Harlan had buckled on his sword and was loading his pistols when loyal Drigpal, the jemadar in command of the sepoys, appeared at the tent door, out of uniform and visibly distraught. The Hindu officer ‘touched his forehead with the back of his hand and then assuming an attitude of respect with his hands closed before his breast and downcast eyes’ delivered the worst possible news. The entire force of regular soldiers had deserted.
‘What? All?’ demanded Harlan incredulously.
‘With the exception of four men who are my friends and Your Highness’s slaves.’
Reeling, Harlan ordered Gul Khan to find out the extent of this desertion, then slumped into a chair, declaring: ‘Let everyone retire, and leave me to myself.’ Gul Khan returned a few moments later. The sepoys had indeed vanished, he said, defecting en masse to the nawab of Dera Ismail Khan, who had secretly sent agents to recruit them. ‘The fears of these people were excited by the dangerous nature of our enterprise,’ wrote Harlan bitterly, ‘and they accepted the Nawab’s offer of service, deserting in a cowardly and traitorous manner at the moment of active necessity.’
The Rohillahs were still at their posts, but Harlan perceived that ‘an air of despondency prevailed amongst the remaining soldiers, who consisted now principally of lawless adventurers of the worst class’. To make matters worse, he suspected that his one-handed lieutenant was double-dealing. ‘The conduct and management of Gool Khan appeared incompetent, selfish and suspicious,’ particularly as he had refused to lead the mutineers in an assault on Tak. Surrounded by heavily armed and probably mutinous mercenaries, reliant on a man whose loyalty was seriously in doubt, hundreds of miles from British India and with the local chief conspiring against him, Harlan found even his granite optimism beginning to crumble. ‘My affairs,’ he wrote with splendid understatement, ‘began to assume a dangerous and gloomy aspect, [which] induced me to contemplate a retreat.’
The next morning the situation became even darker, when Gul Khan reported that the Englishman Charles Masson had also vanished, decamping surreptitiously before daybreak. This new desertion, Harlan decided, was also the work of the nawab’s agents. Certainly Masson later recorded that he had spent several weeks in Dera Ismail Khan, where he was handsomely entertained, but it is equally possible that the eccentric Englishman had merely wandered off alone. Either way, Harlan was furious, and deeply hurt by what he regarded as Masson’s rank treachery. The two men would meet again. Having briefly been friends, they would henceforth be the most bitter enemies.
John Brown, solid and dependable, remained at Harlan’s side, but Masson’s disloyalty had convinced the American that the time had come to take ‘measures that should allay the storm rising around me, threatening to involve in its turmoil the personal security of our party’. Once more he wondered whether to lead an attack on Tak with his remaining forces, but that, he reflected, would be a huge and unnecessary gamble. ‘I was restrained from doing so only by the extravagance and desperation of the enterprise. My resources were numerous and my prospects sufficiently encouraging to forbid placing all my aspirations upon the result of a forlorn hope. Had I been desperate, the affair of Tak would have been a final determination, and must have decided my fortunes either to sink or swim, but there remained many other ways of accomplishing my designs more feasible, if not less dangerous.’ The idea of retreat was anathema. He would push on, whatever the danger. ‘From the latter it will appear I never shrank,’ he later wrote. ‘Indeed, incidents of that nature accrued during my intrigues at Kabul in 1828 surpassing all my previous conceptions.’
5 THE DERVISH FROM CHESTER COUNTY
Harlan’s first priority was to get away from Dera Ismail Khan as fast as possible. The deserters had surely by now confirmed what the nawab already suspected: that the feringhee was no amateur traveller. More worrying yet was the general atmosphere of insubordination emanating from his remaining troops, and from Gul Khan in particular. The once-cheery Rohillah now exuded an ‘air
