hecked them for an
instant.

The travellers, nestling up against one another, had awaited, each after
his own fashion, the coming of the Arabs. The Colonel, with his hands
back in his trouser-pockets, tried to whistle out of his dry lips.
Belmont folded his arms and leaned against a rock, with a sulky frown
upon his lowering face. So strangely do our minds act that his three
successive misses and the tarnish to his reputation as a marksman was
troubling him more than his impending fate. Cecil Brown stood erect, and
plucked nervously at the upturned points of his little prim moustache.
Monsieur Fardet groaned over his wounded wrist. Mr. Stephens, in sombre
impotence, shook his head slowly, the living embodiment of prosaic
law and order. Mr. Stuart stood, his umbrella still over him, with no
expression upon his heavy face or in his staring brown eyes. Headingly
lay with that china-white cheek resting motionless upon the stones.
His sun-hat had fallen off, and he looked quite boyish with his ruffled
yellow hair and his unlined, clean-cut face. The dragoman sat upon a
stone and played nervously with his donkey-whip. So the Arabs found them
when they reached the summit of the hill.

And then, just as the foremost rushed to lay hands upon them, a most
unexpected incident arrested them. From the time of the first appearance
of the Dervishes the fat clergyman of Birmingham had looked like a man
in a cataleptic trance. He had neither moved nor spoken. But now he
suddenly woke at a bound into strenuous and heroic energy. It may have
been the mania of fear, or it may have been the blood of some Berserk
ancestor which stirred suddenly in his veins; but he broke into a wild
shout, and, catching up a stick, he struck right and left among the
Arabs with a fury which was more savage than their own. One who helped
to draw up this narrative has left it upon record that of all the
pictures which have been burned into his brain, there is none so clear
as that of this man, his large face shining with perspiration, and his
great body dancing about with unwieldy agility, as he struck at the
shrinking, snarling savages.

[Illustration: He struck at the snarling savages p 94]

Then a spear-head flashed from behind a rock with a quick, vicious
upward thrust, the clergyman fell upon his hands and knees, and the
horde poured over him to seize their unresisting victims. Knives
glimmered before their eyes, rude hands clutched at their wrists and