ree
successive misses, and the tarnish to his reputation as a marksman, was
troubling him more than his impending fate. Cecil Brown stood erect,
and plucked nervously at the up-turned points of his little prim
moustache. Monsieur Fardet groaned over his wounded wrist.
Mr. Stephens, in sombre impotence, shook his head slowly, the living
embodiment of prosaic law and order. Mr. Stuart stood, his umbrella
still over him, with no expression upon his heavy face, or in his
staring brown eyes. Headingly lay with that china-white cheek resting
motionless upon the stones. His sun-hat had fallen off, and he looked
quite boyish with his ruffled yellow hair and his un-lined, clean-cut
face. The dragoman sat upon a stone and played nervously with his
donkey-whip. So the Arabs found them when they reached the summit of
the hill.

And then, just as the foremost rushed to lay hands upon them, a most
unexpected incident arrested them. From the time of the first
appearance of the Dervishes the fat clergyman of Birmingham had looked
like a man in a cataleptic trance. He had neither moved nor spoken.
But now he suddenly woke at a bound into strenuous and heroic energy.
It may have been the mania of fear, or it may have been the blood of
some Berserk ancestor which stirred suddenly in his veins; but he broke
into a wild shout, and, catching up a stick, he struck right and left
among the Arabs with a fury which was more savage than their own.
One who helped to draw up this narrative has left it upon record that,
of all the pictures which have been burned into his brain, there is none
so clear as that of this man, his large face shining with perspiration,
and his great body dancing about with unwieldy agility, as he struck at
the shrinking, snarling savages. Then a spear-head flashed from behind
a rock with a quick, vicious, upward thrust, the clergyman fell upon his
hands and knees, and the horde poured over him to seize their
unresisting victims. Knives glimmered before their eyes, rude hands
clutched at their wrists and at their throats, and then, with brutal and
unreasoning violence, they were hauled and pushed down the steep winding
path to where the camels were waiting below. The Frenchman waved his
unwounded hand as he walked. "_Vive le Khalifa! Vive le Madhi!" he
shouted, until a blow from behind with the butt-end of a Remington beat
him into silence.

And now they were herded in at the base of the Abousir rock, this l