finger. Presently a movement in the desert arrested his attention.
He put a field-glass to his eyes, and scanned the field of operations
closely once more.

"Good-good!" he burst out cheerfully. "Achmet has done the one thing
possible. The way to the north will be still open. He has flung his
men between the Nile and the enemy, and now the batteries are at work."
Opening the door, they passed out. "He has anticipated my orders," he
added. "Come, Lacey, it will be an anxious night. The moon is full, and
Ebn Ezra Bey has his work cut out--sharp work for all of us, and..."

Lacey could not hear the rest of his words in the roar of the artillery.
David's steamers in the river were pouring shot into the desert where
the enemy lay, and Achmet's "friendlies" and the Egyptians were making
good their new position. As David and Lacey, fearlessly exposing
themselves to rifle fire, and taking the shortest and most dangerous
route to where Achmet fought, rode swiftly from the palace, Ebn Ezra's
three steamers appeared up the river, and came slowly down to where
David's gunboats lay. Their appearance was greeted by desperate
discharges of artillery from the forces under Ali Wad Hei, who had
received word of their coming two hours before, and had accordingly
redisposed his attacking forces. But for Achmet's sharp initiative, the
boldness of the attempt to cut off the way north and south would have
succeeded, and the circle of fire and sword would have been complete.
Achmet's new position had not been occupied before, for men were too
few, and the position he had just left was now exposed to attack.

Never since the siege began had the foe shown such initiative and
audacity. They had relied on the pressure of famine and decimation by
sickness, the steady effects of sorties, with consequent fatalities and
desertions, to bring the Liberator of the Slaves to his knees. Ebn Ezra
Bey had sought to keep quiet the sheikhs far south, but he had been shut
up in Darffur for months, and had been in as bad a plight as David. He
had, however, broken through at last. His ruse in leaving the steamers
in the night and marching across the desert was as courageous as it was
perilous, for, if discovered before he reached the beleaguered place,
nothing could save his little force from destruction. There was one way
in from the desert to the walled town, and it was through that space
which Achmet and his men had occupied, and on which Ali Wad Hei might