With a yell of defiance the dervishes dashed forward. The sheik's party
poured in a volley as they did so, and then grasping their spears sprang
to their feet, Edgar alone remaining prone, and firing four more shots
as the dervishes traversed the intervening space. There was little
disparity of numbers when the parties met. The sheik had, at Edgar's
suggestion, ordered his men to form in a compact group with their spears
pointing outward, as the great point was to withstand the rush until
their friends came up. But the dervishes recklessly threw themselves
upon the spears, and in a moment all were engaged in a hand-to-hand
fight. Edgar, feeling that with a clubbed rifle he should have no chance
against the spears and swords of the Arabs, kept between the sheik and
two of his most trusted followers, and loading as quickly as he could
throw out and drop in the cartridges, brought down four men who rushed
one after another upon them.

It seemed an age to him, but it was scarce more than a minute after the
combatants had closed that, with a shout, the ten new-comers arrived on
the scene. Edgar dropped a fresh cartridge into his rifle and stood
quiet; he had no wish to join in the slaughter. The dervishes fought
desperately, and none asked for quarter, and in two or three minutes the
combat was over and all had fallen, save three or four men who had
extricated themselves from the fight and dashed off at the top of their
speed, quickly pursued by the exultant victors. To Edgar's surprise they
did not run in the direction of the sand-hill behind which he had
thought their camp was made, but bore away to the south.

Pursuers and pursued were soon out of sight, and Edgar turned to see how
his companions had fared. Three of them had been killed and six of the
others had received spear-thrusts or sword-cuts more or less severe.

"It would have gone hard with us, sheik, if our friends had not come
up."

"We should have beaten them," the sheik said. "That gun of yours would
have turned the scale. Had it not been for that they would have been too
strong for us, for they were all fighting men in their prime, and five
or six of my men were no match for them in a hand-to-hand fight.
Mashallah! it has been a great day; it will be talked of long in our
tribe, how, with but twenty men, and many of these not at their best, we
withstood forty dervishes, and so beat them that when a reinforcement of
eight men came to us we destroyed them a