eral of the Dervishes had seen the singular apparition upon the
hill, and had un-slung their Remingtons, but a long arm suddenly shot up
behind the figure of the Birmingham clergyman, a brown hand seized upon
his skirts, and he disappeared with a snap. Higher up the pass, just
below the spot where Mr. Stuart had been standing, appeared the tall
figure of the Emir Abderrahman. He had sprung upon a boulder, and was
shouting and waving his arms, but the shouts were drowned in a long,
rippling roar of musketry from each side of the khor. The bastion-like
cliff was fringed with gun-barrels, with red tarbooshes drooping over
the triggers. From the other lip also came the long spurts of flame
and the angry clatter of the rifles. The raiders were caught in an
ambuscade. The Emir fell, but was up again and waving. There was
a splotch of blood upon his long white beard. He kept pointing and
gesticulating, but his scattered followers could not understand what he
wanted. Some of them came tearing down the pass, and some from behind
were pushing to the front. A few dismounted and tried to climb up sword
in hand to that deadly line of muzzles, but one by one they were hit,
and came rolling from rock to rock to the bottom of the ravine. The
shooting was not very good. One negro made his way unharmed up the whole
side, only to have his brains dashed out with the butt-end of a Martini
at the top. The Emir had fallen off his rock and lay in a crumpled heap,
like a brown and white patch-work quilt at the bottom of it. And then
when half of them were down it became evident, even to those exalted
fanatical souls, that there was no chance for them, and that they must
get out of these fatal rocks and into the desert again. They galloped
down the pass, and it is a frightful thing to see a camel galloping over
broken ground. The beast's own terror, his ungainly bounds, the sprawl
of his four legs all in the air together, his hideous cries, and the
yells of his rider who is bucked high from his saddle with every spring,
make a picture which is not to be forgotten. The women screamed as
this mad torrent of frenzied creatures came pouring past them, but the
Colonel edged his camel and theirs farther and farther in among the
rocks and away from the retreating Arabs. The air was full of whistling
bullets, and they could hear them smacking loudly against the stones all
round them.

"Keep quiet, and they'll pass us," whispered the Colonel, who was all