This was on the 13th of February. The garrison were in good heart, and the fortifications of Jellalabad were rising rapidly around them. In spite of all opposition at Caubul—in spite of the counsels of Alexander Burnes, who heartily despised the enemy—in spite of a sneering remark from the envoy, that the sappers would have nothing to do but to pick a few stones from under the gun-wheels, Broadfoot had insisted on taking with him a good supply of working tools, some of which he had ordered to be made for him, by forced labour, in the city; and had sent an urgent indent on the march for further supplies.[40] It seemed, he said afterwards, “as though Providence had stiffened his neck on this occasion;” for now at Jellalabad, he found himself with implements of all kinds and with large supplies of blasting powder, able alike to make and to destroy. And gallantly the good work proceeded, in prospect, too, of an immediate attack, for Akbar Khan, with the white English tents which proclaimed our disgrace, was within a few miles of the walls which we were turning into formidable defences.
But a great calamity was now about to befall the Jellalabad garrison. On the morning of the 19th of February the men were busied with their accustomed labour. With their arms piled within reach, they were plying axe and shovel, toiling with their wonted cheerfulness and activity at the defences, which they had begun to look upon with the satisfied air of men who had long seen their work growing under their hands, and now recognised the near approach of its completion. They had worked, indeed, to good purpose. Very different were the fortifications of Jellalabad from what they had been when Sale entered the place in November.[41] They were now real, not nominal defences. The unremitting toil of nearly three months had not been without its visible and appreciable results. It seemed, too, as though the work were about to be completed just at the time when the defences were most needed. Akbar Khan was in the neighbourhood of Jellalabad, and every day Sale expected to be called upon to meet the flower of the Barukzye horse on the plain. But on this 19th of February, when the garrison were flushed with joy at the thought of the near completion of their work, a fearful visitation of Providence, suddenly and astoundingly, turned all their labour to very nothingness. There was an awful and mysterious sound, as of thunder beneath their feet; then the earth shook; the houses of the town trembled and fell; the ramparts of the fort seemed to reel and totter, and presently came down with a crash.[42] On the first sound of the threatened convulsion the men had instinctively rushed to their arms, and the greater number had escaped the coming ruin; but it is still among those recollections of the defence which are dwelt upon by the “illustrious garrison” in the liveliest spirit of jocularity, how the field-officer of the day—a gallant and good soldier—but one who had more regard for external proprieties than was generally appreciated in those days, was buried beneath a heap of rubbish, and how he was extricated from his perilous position by some men of the 13th, under circumstances which even now they enjoy in their retrospect with a relish which years have not impaired.[43]