dly upon his
brain, like bats that blunder against a lamp and extinguish it with
foolish, flapping wings. He thought that somehow the enemy must have
stolen a march upon the defenders: that the hated Arabs had got into the
tower, from a ladder raised outside the wall, and that soon they would
be pouring down in a swarm. Before he knew what he was doing, he had
stumbled up the stairs on to the flat wall by the gate. Scrambling along
with his torch, he got on to the bordj roof, and lit bonfire after
bonfire, though Victoria called on him to stop, crying that it was too
soon--that the men outside would shoot and kill him who would save them
all.

The sweet silence of the starry evening was crashed upon with lights and
jarring sounds.

Stephen, who had climbed the tower with a lantern and a kitchen
lamp-reflector slung in a table-cover, on his back, had just got his
makeshift apparatus in order, and standing on a narrow shelf of floor
which overhung a well-like abyss, had begun his signalling to the
northward.

Too late he realized that, for all the need of haste, he ought to have
waited long enough to warn the drunken Frenchman what he meant to do. If
he had, this contretemps would not have happened. His telegraphic
flashes, long and short, must have told the enemy what was going on in
the tower, but they could not have seen him standing there, exposed like
a target to their fire, if Rostafel had not lit the bonfires.

Suddenly a chorus of yells broke out, strange yells that sprang from
savage hearts; and one sidewise glance down showed Stephen the desert
illuminated with red fire. He went on with his work, not stopping to
count the men on horses and camels who rode fast towards the bordj,
though not yet at the foot of that swelling sand hill on which it stood.
But a picture--of uplifted dark faces and pointing rifles--was stamped
upon his brain in that one swift look, clear as an impression of a seal
in hot wax. He had even time to see that those faces were half enveloped
in masks such as he had noticed in photographs of Touaregs, yet he was
sure that the twenty or thirty men were not Touaregs. When close to the
bordj all flung themselves from their animals, which were led away,
while the riders took cover by throwing themselves flat on the sand.
Then they began shooting, but he looked no more. He was determined to
keep on signalling till he got an answer or was shot dead.

There were others, however, who looked and