flint battle-axes.

Everyone in the village was so busy that the place was like an ant-heap
when you have walked into it by accident. The women were busy and even
the children.

Quite suddenly all the air seemed to glow and grow red--it was like
the sudden opening of a furnace door, such as you may see at Woolwich
Arsenal if you ever have the luck to be taken there--and then almost as
suddenly it was as though the furnace doors had been shut. For the sun
had set, and it was night.

The sun had that abrupt way of setting in Egypt eight thousand years
ago, and I believe it has never been able to break itself of the habit,
and sets in exactly the same manner to the present day. The girl brought
the skins of wild deer and led the children to a heap of dry sedge.

'My father says they will not attack yet. Sleep!' she said, and it
really seemed a good idea. You may think that in the midst of all these
dangers the children would not have been able to sleep--but somehow,
though they were rather frightened now and then, the feeling was growing
in them--deep down and almost hidden away, but still growing--that the
Psammead was to be trusted, and that they were really and truly safe.
This did not prevent their being quite as much frightened as they could
bear to be without being perfectly miserable.

'I suppose we'd better go to sleep,' said Robert. 'I don't know what on
earth poor old Nurse will do with us out all night; set the police on
our tracks, I expect. I only wish they could find us! A dozen policemen
would be rather welcome just now. But it's no use getting into a stew
over it,' he added soothingly. 'Good night.'

And they all fell asleep.

They were awakened by long, loud, terrible sounds that seemed to come
from everywhere at once--horrible threatening shouts and shrieks
and howls that sounded, as Cyril said later, like the voices of men
thirsting for their enemies' blood.

'It is the voice of the strange men,' said the girl, coming to them
trembling through the dark. 'They have attacked the walls, and the
thorns have driven them back. My father says they will not try again
till daylight. But they are shouting to frighten us. As though we were
savages! Dwellers in the swamps!' she cried indignantly.

All night the terrible noise went on, but when the sun rose, as abruptly
as he had set, the sound suddenly ceased.

The children had hardly time to be glad of this before a shower
of javelins came hurtling over