disappeared behind the brow of an adjacent knoll.

"See that, Lawson?" inquired a voice from the supernumerary rank.

"Yes," answered the subaltern, "like potting rabbits. I think I could
have wiped that fellow's eye if I'd been there. The bayonet _versus_
lance was done better."

Jack glanced round, and saw the speaker smoking a pipe, while Sergeant
Sparks tramped along close behind with an approving smile upon his
face, as though, if questioned, he would have made exactly the same
observation himself. It was no time to be fastidious or sentimental;
the callous indifference to life and death, whether real or assumed,
was the thing wanted. Here, at least, were two superiors who did not
seem to consider the situation very serious. The young soldier shifted
his rifle to the other shoulder, and grasped the butt with a firmer
grip.

For an hour, which might have been a lifetime, the square toiled on,
every now and again changing direction to gain more open ground; the
stretchers and cacolets constantly receiving fresh burdens. A man, two
files in front of our hero, went down with a bullet through the head,
and those in rear stumbled over him.

"Close up! close up, and keep that corner blocked in!"

With mouth parched with the stifling heat and dust, Jack sucked at the
lukewarm dregs of his water-bottle, and wondered if the river itself
would ever quench his thirst. "Swabs," his rear-rank man, kept
fingering the loose cartridges in his pouch. At length the marksman's
patience and _sang froid_ seemed exhausted.

"Is this going on for ever?" he blurted out, "Ain't we ever going to
give it 'em back?"

Hardly had the question been asked, when the answer was made evident in
a most unmistakable manner.

Away in the grass to the left front a number of white and green flags,
mounted on long poles, had been for some time visible; and at this
point, as though they sprang out of the ground, swarms of Arabs
suddenly made their appearance, and with headlong speed and reckless
devotion charged down upon the left-front corner of the square. The
scattered line of skirmishers turned and fled for their lives; while
behind them, like a devouring tidal wave, the vast black mass rushed
forward, their fierce shouts filling the air with a hollow roar like
that of a ground sea.

Like many another young soldier, with nothing but a few hundred yards
of desert between himself and death, Jack's first impulse was to raise
his rifle