istinguishable but the flash of
weapons, and they re-appeared _beyond_ the masses through whom they cut
their way, prostrate figures marking their track, and were now serrying
their ranks, disordered in the fierce passage.

But the spectators could watch no more, for the shells failed to
dislodge the Arabs from the ruined mill, and it was impossible to
advance and leave any such indomitable fanatics, who cared not for
numbers and despised death, so long as they could wreak their wrath upon
an infidel, in their rear; and the immediate business was to turn them
out of that lair.

There were about a couple of hundred sheltered by the ruin and the old
boiler; and for some distance round about the ground was regularly
honey-combed with rifle-pits, each of which contained an Arab, crouching
down, spear in hand, only desiring to kill an enemy and die.

It was said before that they swarmed out of the fort earlier in the day
like bees when their hive is tapped. Like bees, too, when angered, they
only sought to sting, though they knew that the act of stinging was
their own destruction. As a soldier came to the edge of an apparently
empty hole in the ground, a man would spring out upon him and transfix
him before he had time to offer resistance. Not that this succeeded
often.

The men soon learned to approach these rifle-pits with their muzzles
lowered, finger on trigger, the point of the bayonet over the opening
before they came up to it. Then, if the Arab made his spring, he was
transfixed; if he kept crouching, waiting for the other to pass, he was
shot. A large number of the holes became the graves they looked like
before the boiler was reached.

Here the massacre was horrible, for at that point the state of things
was reversed, and the Soudanese were few in number, while the English
were the many. And it was a revolting thing to have to shoot down and
stab this handful of heroes.

But it could not be helped; they would not fly, and they would not
surrender; and to endeavour to spare one of them was to insure your own
death or that of a friend. It was even necessary to slay the slain, for
they would sham and lie still, to spring up when the English had passed
and stab one in the back; then stand with extended arms to be shot, with
a smile of triumph and joy, secure of Paradise since he had sent a
double-dyed infidel, a disbeliever, both in Mahomet and the Mahdi, to
his doom.

The old sugar-mill and the ground a