My chief trouble at this time was the presence of the Afghan Sirdars within the cantonment.  I had good reason to believe that some of them, though full of protestations of friendship, had been in communication with Mahomed Jan, the high-priest Mushk-i-Alam, and other Afghan leaders, so that I felt sure that neither they nor their followers were to be depended upon.  I was also somewhat anxious about the Pathan soldiers in our ranks, a feeling which I was unwilling to acknowledge even to myself, for they had hitherto behaved with marked loyalty, and done splendid service; but they were now being exposed to a most severe trial, in that they were, as I knew, being constantly appealed to by their co-religionists to join in the jahad against us, and bitterly reproached for serving their infidel masters.  Whether they would be strong enough to resist such appeals, it was impossible to tell; but it would have been most unwise, as well as most painful to me, to show the slightest suspicion of these fine soldiers.  It happened that the Corps of Guides and 5th Punjab Infantry, which had of all regiments the largest number of Mahomedans amongst them, were located at the two extremities of the Bimaru range, the points most likely to be attacked; to have made any change in the disposition would have been to show that they were suspected, so I determined (after taking their commanding officers, Colonels Jenkins and McQueen, into my confidence) to leave them where they were, and merely to strengthen each post by a couple of companies of Highlanders.

I was also considerably exercised about the safety of the large stacks of firewood, grain, and forage, for if anything had happened to them we could not have continued to hold Sherpur.  There were not enough British soldiers to furnish guards for these stacks, so I was obliged to have them watched for a time by officers; an opportune fall of snow, however, on the night of the 18th, rendered incendiarism impossible.

One other extremely unpleasant precaution I felt it my duty to take was the placing of Daud Shah, Yakub Khan’s Commander-in-Chief, under arrest.  I liked the man, and he had mixed freely with us all for more than two months.  He was not, however, absolutely above suspicion:  some of his near relatives were the most prominent amongst our enemies; and I had been struck by a change in his manner towards me of late.  In trusting him to the extent I had done, I acted against the opinion of almost everyone about me, and now that I had a doubt myself, I felt I was not justified in leaving him at liberty, for if he were disposed to make use of his opportunities to our disadvantage, his unrestrained freedom of movement and observation would be certainly a source of great danger.

For three or four days cloudy weather prevented heliograph communication with Lataband, and messengers sent by Hudson had failed to reach Sherpur, so that we were without any news from the outer world; but on the afternoon of the 18th I received a letter from Brigadier-General Charles Gough, conveying the disappointing intelligence that he had only got as far as Jagdalak, twenty-one miles from Gandamak, and that he did not consider himself strong enough to advance on Kabul.