them!

Larrikins, who was next me, got his right arm transfixed by one of their
light spears or jereeds, a lot of which came whistling through the air
into our ranks like a flight of sparrows.

This made Larry drop his rifle like a hot potato; but, nothing daunted,
he kept alongside of me all the same, drawing his cutlass as we raced
along together.

"Lor', Tom, that wer' a nipper, that wer'!" he cried, with a grin on his
face, as if the wound were rather a joke than otherwise. "But I'm
jiggered if I don't pay out the joker who skewered me then!"

At that moment a couple of the Arabs made at the pair of us; and I had
quite enough to do to guard off the shower of cuts one of them delivered
round my devoted head, his curved scimitar whirling about me in all
directions and the sunlight from above making it flash so that it
dazzled my eyes.

However, a lucky drive with my sword-bayonet through the rascal's throat
stopped his little game; for the swarthy Arab dropped his scimitar
instanter, with a gurgle of rage and an upward roll of his eyes, "like a
dying duck in a thunder-storm," as father used to say, tumbling down all
of a heap as dead as mutton.

Hardly had I done with him when, strange to say, I heard the bark of a
dog.

This was very unusual, all Mahometans hating dogs and believing them to
be possessed of the Devil.

Besides, somehow or other, I seemed to recognise the bark as familiar to
me; for, believe me, the voices of dogs and their respective expressions
of grief or joy, though sounding the same to alien ears, are as distinct
to such as are accustomed to hear them frequently as the voices of human
beings of our acquaintance or any individual.

Before I had time to think, however, though my senses were all on the
alert from hearing the dog's bark, I saw that the naval officer whom we
had rushed up to help at Mr Chisholm's instigation, was engaged in a
fierce hand-to-hand fight with two Arabs, one of whom, a tall, lean
Somali, with a peculiar sort of turban round his head, unlike any of
those sported by the rest of the gang, I was certain was no less a
personage than the man, or `sheik' as he was called, Abdalah, the leader
of the Somalis.

As I noted this, the officer fell; but, ere the big Arab, who drew back
a long spear that he wielded, could give him the fatal thrust he
intended, I was upon him.

Clubbing my rifle, I dealt a vicious blow at the savage brute's head
which shivered the spear w