On February 20th, 1839, Cotton was at Shikarpoor, and again differences between him and Macnaghten seemed imminent. Soojah had found himself short of carriage, and Macnaghten had asked Cotton to supply him with 1000 camels from his own train. But the General expressed himself strongly to the effect that if Soojah was unable to advance his men, it were far better that Soojah and his men should be left behind than that their wants should be relieved at the expense of the English troops. It was but too apparent, even at that early stage, that the English military officers were inclined to look upon Soojah and his 6000 soldiers as altogether superfluous. He was, indeed, a king who was to be restored to his throne, but until the throne was ready for him it would be better for all parties that he should remain in the background. Macnaghten, keenly alive to the danger of such sentiments, and feeling himself especially bound, both in honour and interest, to uphold the cause of our ally, combated the military policy resolutely. A collision was happily averted by the timely arrival of despatches from the Viceroy, strongly tending to confirm Macnaghten's views; nevertheless, when the English force advanced, three days afterwards, the carriage difficulty had not been solved, and Soojah with his levies remained at Shikarpoor. Keane, who came up with the Bombay army some days later, though little less willing, was more able to help; but the king, who had fondly hoped to head the advance into his own kingdom, was, for the time, compelled to content himself with a second place. Cotton's march through the Bolan Pass to Quettah, though arduous and painful, was unopposed. Many of the camels and other beasts of burden dropped dead on the route from want of water; there was considerable desertion among the camp followers, and some plundering on the part of the Beloochees, but progress was steadily made, and on March 26th the column reached Quettah, "a most miserable mud town, with a small castle on a mound, on which there was a small gun on a ricketty carriage." Here there seemed a fair prospect of sheer starvation. Stores, as well as baggage, had been abandoned among the rugged defiles of the Bolan Pass, and Mehrab Khan, the Beloochee Prince of Khelat, with whom Burnes had concluded a treaty in our favour, either could not, or would not, help. He declared that there was very little grain in his country, and Burnes could not prove that he did not speak truth, while he was bound to allow the Khan's plea that much of the alleged scarcity was owing, though unavoidably owing, to our own presence. He could not, therefore, conscientiously recommend Macnaghten to sanction Cotton's proposal for a movement on Khelat, though convinced in his own mind of our ally's treachery, and when Keane, arriving at Quettah on April 6th, assumed the chief command, it was decided to push on for Candahar with all possible speed. Save for the heat, and the scarcity of water, the advance proceeded uneventfully enough. Our soldiers behaved admirably under circumstances peculiarly trying to Europeans, and experienced by many of them for the first time. George Lawrence (one of the three owners of a name which is a household word throughout India, at that time a captain of the 2nd Bengal Light Cavalry) relates how he saw a trooper of the 16th Lancers pour the contents of a soda-water bottle half full of water, a treasure then worth its weight in gold, down the throat of a native child on the point of perishing from thirst. As the army neared Candahar, Soojah was moved up again to the front, and many of the chiefs and people of Western Afghanistan hastened to his standard. It was known that Kohun Dil Khan had fled, that there was open dissension among the Barukzye brotherhood, and it soon became clear that if a stand was to be made it would be made at a point nearer Cabul. On April 25th, Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk, after more than thirty years of exile, re-entered in bloodless triumph the southern capital of his kingdom.