en the wide-stretching
plain, where they had ample opportunity of learning the truth. For on
every side, streaming towards Khartoum, where it lay whitened in the
distance, were the routed dervishes, some in troops, displaying military
order, but the greater part scattered and flying for their lives on
horses, camels, and on foot.

They had need--for the Emir's officer had stayed too long in his blind
belief in the success of the Khalifa's troops--the avenging forces were
close behind, and the dervishes were falling fast, dotting the plain
with their white garments, while riderless horses and camels careered
wildly here and there.

The race was for Khartoum--the efforts of the Sirdar's troops, horse,
foot, and artillery, to cut them off, and it was not long before the
English party grasped the fact that it would be a marvel if they reached
the distant city alive in the midst of the hurrying crowd.

But the Emir's bodyguard worked well, keeping their charge together,
hurrying on the camels, encouraging the women, and twice over forming up
and attacking bands of their fellow fighting men who approached
menacingly, seeing in the flying party of the Emir's household ample
opportunities for securing plunder, but only to be beaten off.

Any attempt at escape would only have been to invite recapture. Frank
and his brother, well mounted as they were, like the guard, on a couple
of the Emir's magnificent Arabs, could have galloped off with ease, but
the slower going camels on which their friends rode could not have kept
up with them, and even if an attempt had been made where were they to
go? It was to run the gauntlet amongst the relics of the flying army,
to risk being cut down by their friends before they had time to explain
that they were not what they seemed.

Harry seemed to have forgotten his injured arm, and he and Frank rode
together, helping the officer of the guard, though it was only in
keeping their own party together, and encouraging the followers of the
Sheikh, who were losing their calmness in the wild rout, with the guns
of the horse artillery sending forth grape wherever a knot of the enemy
hung together, and the cavalry, white and black, charging here and
there.

It was while Frank was cheering on Sam, and then helping a dismounted
man to a seat on a baggage camel, that the officer rode up, meeting
Harry, who turned to him at once, to address him in the keen, commanding
tones of the British officer, a