it was, Eyre thought, “heaven.” On 11 January their captors brought them toward Tezeen in the wake of the retreating British force. Though they could not know the full extent of the disaster overtaking the remnants of the Kabul force, they must have suspected the worst. “The snow was absolutely dyed with streaks and patches of blood for whole miles, and at every step we encountered the mangled bodies of British and Hindustani soldiers and helpless camp-followers, lying side by side … the red stream of life still trickling from many a gaping wound inflicted by the merciless Afghan knife,” wrote Eyre. Lady Sale described the “sickening” smell of blood and guiding her horse “so as not to tread on the bodies.”Reaching the fort at Tezeen, the captives found Lieutenant Melville, who had surrendered to the Afghans the previous day having, Eyre noted unsympathetically, “received some slight sword cuts,” as well as some four hundred sepoy cavalry who had deserted to the enemy and were camped outside the fort.
