nd presently some wounded men of those engaged in the valley to his
front falling to the rear, and coming within five hundred yards of him,
and clear of the smoke, he perceived that they were Arabs too. And then
the fearful truth broke upon him. The spent bullets which fell towards
him came from his friends. The army had been enticed into the defile,
round which the Mahdi's troops were posted. When it was hopelessly
entangled, a body of Arabs, which had lain in ambush for the purpose,
had closed in upon their rear to cut off retreat, and these were the men
now in front of him.

Though he felt convinced that this must be the state of the case, Harry
did not give up all hope that the Egyptians might fight their way
through, though with severe loss, to the other end of the defile, and to
ascertain this he went back, and then began mounting the higher ground,
trying to work round to the front of the position. This he had to do
very cautiously, to avoid falling in with groups of Arabs, whom he was
perpetually sighting. Indeed, to get near the edge of the rocks
commanding the defile without being observed was impossible, but by
making a wide detour he kept clear of them. And thus, after the lapse
of some hours, and with occasional difficult climbing, he reached a
lofty point, from which he could distinguish the sides of the ravine
held by the Arabs and the pall of smoke which covered the doomed square,
fighting like a lion at bay, surrounded by the hunters.

For eagerly as he searched with his telescope in every direction he
could perceive no line of advance or retreat; every point appeared to be
barred by the enemy. There seemed to him only one hope; if General
Hicks could hold on till nightfall, perhaps he might push through
backwards or forwards under cover of the darkness.

So the hours passed, and the fusillade did not cease; only slackened at
times to burst out again, till the sun sank down in all his glory, and
the heavenly splendour of the after-glow bathed the sky, just as if all
on earth was peace, goodwill, and happiness, and men had ceased to
strain all the powers and talents which the God of Mercy has bestowed
upon them for their mutual benefit to one another's destruction; then
sudden darkness, and silence broken only at long intervals by a fitful
splutter of musketry.

Harry had marked a little cave, where two boulders leaned together, and
into this he now crept, for the air was cold. Here he lay, t