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AMANULLAH

were being bundled into the cabins. More troop-
carriers came from Cairo and Baghdad to help in the
work. There was never a hitch, though every expert
in the Air Force waited with bated breath while the
machines were on their journeys.

One of the refugees reached Lahore after her flight
from Kabul with only the clothes she stood up in. She
was Mrs. Isaacson, an American woman on her honey-
moon. Her husband and she had essayed a trip round
the world, and had arrived in Kabul just before the
road was destroyed and the bridges burned. In spite
of offers to take him back to India and safety with his
wife, Mr. Isaacson refused to abandon his Ford car, and
after sticking out the siege of Kabul, drove over the
hills to Kandahar and eventually arrived in Quetta,
where I met him, very happy with two Afghan wolf-
hounds which he had collected. That honeymoon had
already embraced a rebellion in China, and was further
enlivened by the downfall of a regime in Afghanistan.
A wonderful breed, the American motorists. . . .

Rescue of the women besieged in Kabul had been
effected not a day too early. On December 28, the
tense and fretful forces joined issue, and there raged in
the outskirts of the city a battle which was destined to
be protracted and savage. It lasted a full ten days and
nights, though fitful and indecisive, before either side
cracked under the strain.

Bacha Sachao was now in the thick of the fighting.
He sent jeering messages to the King's forces, with
threats of the ingenious deaths that they would die.
He exposed himself foolhardily to the stray bullets that
whistled round the outskirts of the city. He was here,
there, and everywhere. None could resist his bravado
and his examples of bravery. There was come to Kabul
a real leader of men.

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