and you may imagine
how he was cheered.

The men lay down in lines two deep, leaving a space of twelve feet
between the front rank and the hedge of the zereba. They wore their
great coats and slept with their rifles in their hands, the officers
being in rear. In the twelve foot space which was left the sentries
patrolled, and there was no need to ingress the necessity of vigilance
upon them; the known vicinity of the enemy put them sufficiently on the
_qui vive_.

All, however, was quiet till an hour after midnight, when the sleepers
were awakened by a tremendous fusillade, and a storm of bullets came
rushing over the zereba. But as the men were lying down, or crouching
under the hedge, only a few unfortunate animals were struck by the
leaden shower.

To show, however, what absurd things men will do in a panic, an Egyptian
camel driver jumped, in his fright, over the prickly hedge, and ran
along it _outside_, exposed to the enemy's bullets. These failed to
strike him, but an English sentry inside naturally took him for an Arab
trying to force an entrance, and shot him dead. The firing was still
kept up by the enemy, and as some of the shots came lower, being sent
through the hedges, the bivouac fires had to be put out, as their light
evidently guided the Soudanese in their aim. The night was cold, and
this was felt all the more after the heat of the day. And the men lay
shivering, unable to sleep, and wishing for day.

As Strachan lay thus, wrapping himself round as closely as he could in
his great coat, he heard a thud just in front of him, and the man lying
there gave a gasp and straightened his limbs. Strachan rose and went to
him, asking--

"Are you hit, my lad?" But there was no answer; he was quite dead.

This, however, was the only fatal effect of some four or five hours'
incessant firing, for the Arabs kept it up for the remainder of the
night.

At six o'clock the sun rose, and the enemy no longer had it all their
own way. A nine-pounder was run up to the zereba hedge, and pointed in
the direction from which the fusillade was hottest, and on another side
a Gardner was brought to bear on a bit of cover where the Arabs
clustered thickly. Ere the sun was quite above the horizon the loud
sharp report of the former cheered the hearts of those who had been so
hemmed in and pestered, and a second or so after there was a second bang
as the avenging shell burst right among the bushes a thousand yards