Publisher's Synopsis
To have entered, more fully than I have done, into the events and fighting prior to the Retreat from Cabul, would have proved unsuitable for the purpose of my story, and for these events I must refer the reader to history or the newspapers of the time.An officer of the Queen's 44th Regiment escaped death in the Khyber Pass in the mode narrated in its place, by wrapping the regimental colour round him; and strange and varied as the adventures of Captain Waller may appear, after the last fatal stand was made by our troops, some such incidents actually occurred to a Havildar of the Shah's Ghoorka Regiment, after its complete destruction in Afghanistan, so there is much that is real woven up with my story.Fiction, according to Sir Francis Bacon, infuses in literature that which history denies, and in some measure satisfies the mind with shadows, when it cannot enjoy the substance-the shadows of an ideal world. "Art is long and life is short, so we do wisely to live in as many worlds as we can."25, TAVISTOCK ROAD, WESTBOURNE PARK, August, 1871
