llet of a fanatical Mohammedan in the wilds of the Libyan desert.

Meanwhile the fire of the escort had ceased, for they had shot away
their last cartridge. A second man had been killed, and a third --who
was the corporal in charge--had received a bullet in his thigh. He sat
upon a stone, tying up his injury with a grave, preoccupied look upon
his wrinkled black face, like an old woman piecing together a broken
plate. The three others fastened their bayonets with a determined
metallic rasp and snap, and the air of men who intended to sell their
lives dearly.

"They're coming!" cried Belmont, looking over the plain.

"Let them come!" the Colonel answered, putting his hands into his
trouser-pockets. Suddenly he pulled one fist out, and shook it furiously
in the air. "Oh, the cads! die confounded cads!" he shouted, and his
eyes were congested with rage.

It was the fate of the poor donkey-boys which had carried the
self-contained soldier out of his usual calm. During the firing they had
remained huddled, a pitiable group, among the rocks at the base of the
hill. Now upon the conviction that the charge of the Dervishes must
come first upon them, they had sprung upon their animals with shrill,
inarticulate cries of fear, and had galloped off across the plain. A
small flanking-party of eight or ten camel-men had worked round while
the firing had been going on, and these dashed in among the flying
donkey-boys, hacking and hewing with a cold-blooded, deliberate
ferocity. One little boy, in a flapping Galabeeah, kept ahead of his
pursuers for a time, but the long stride of the camels ran him down,
and an Arab thrust his spear into the middle of his stooping back. The
small, white-clad corpses looked like a flock of sheep trailing over the
desert.

But the people upon the rock had no time to think of the cruel fate of
the donkey-boys. Even the Colonel, after that first indignant outburst,
had forgotten all about them. The advancing camel-men had trotted to the
bottom of the hill, had dismounted, and, leaving their camels kneeling,
had rushed furiously onward. Fifty of them were clambering up the path
and over the rocks together, their red turbans appearing and vanishing
again as they scrambled over the boulders. Without a shot or a pause
they surged over the three black soldiers, killing one and stamping
the other two down under their hurrying feet. So they burst on to the
plateau at the top, where an unexpected resistance c