f the rifles. The raiders were caught in an ambuscade.
The Emir fell, but was up again and waving. There was a splotch of
blood upon his long white beard. He kept pointing and gesticulating,
but his scattered followers could not understand what he wanted.
Some of them came tearing down the pass, and some from behind were
pushing to the front. A few dismounted and tried to climb up sword in
hand to that deadly line of muzzles, but one by one they were hit, and
came rolling from rock to rock to the bottom of the ravine.
The shooting was not very good. One negro made his way unharmed up the
whole side, only to have his brains dashed out with the butt-end of a
Martini at the top. The Emir had fallen off his rock and lay in a
crumpled heap, like a brown and white patchwork quilt, at the bottom of
it. And then when half of them were down it became evident, even to
those exalted fanatical souls, that there was no chance for them, and
that they must get out of these fatal rocks and into the desert again.
They galloped down the pass, and it is a frightful thing to see a camel
galloping over broken ground. The beast's own terror, his ungainly
bounds, the sprawl of his four legs all in the air together, his hideous
cries, and the yells of his rider who is bucked high from his saddle
with every spring, make a picture which is not to be forgotten.
The women screamed as this mad torrent of frenzied creatures came
pouring past them, but the Colonel edged his camel and theirs farther
and farther in among the rocks and away from the retreating Arabs.
The air was full of whistling bullets, and they could hear them smacking
loudly against the stones all round them.

"Keep quiet, and they'll pass us," whispered the Colonel, who was all
himself again now that the hour for action had arrived. "I wish to
Heaven I could see Tippy Tilly or any of his friends. Now is the time
for them to help us." He watched the mad stream of fugitives as they
flew past upon their shambling, squattering, loose-jointed beasts, but
the black face of the Egyptian gunner was not among them.

And now it really did seem as if the whole body of them, in their haste
to get clear of the ravine, had not a thought to spend upon the
prisoners. The rush was past, and only stragglers were running the
gauntlet of the fierce fire which poured upon them from above. The last
of all, a young Baggara with a black moustache and pointed beard, looked
up as he passed and