gh roared out
the order to double forward, but could make none hear, so he seized
a rifle from the nearest man and fired it off. Perhaps a dozen men
heard that and began to double. The remainder saw, and followed
suit.

The hail was in our backs. No man ever lived who could have charged
forward into it, and not one of the Turkish sentries made pretense
at anything but running for his life. Long before we reached their
posts they were gone, and a flash of lightning showed the tents
blown tighter than drums in the gaining wind and white with the
hailstones. When we reached the tents there was hail already half a
foot deep underfoot where the wind had blown it into drifts, and the
next flash of lightning showed one tent--the bimbashi's own--split
open and blown fluttering into strips. The bimbashi rushed out with
a blanket round his head and shoulders and tried to kick men out of
another tent to make room for him, and failing to do that he
scrambled in on top of them. Opening the tent let the wind in, and
that tent, too, split and fluttered and blew away. And so at last
they saw us coming.

They saw us when we were so close that there was no time to do much
else than run away or surrender. Quite a lot of them ran away I
imagine, for they disappeared. The bimbashi tried to pistol Ranjoor
Singh, and died for his trouble on a trooper's bayonet. Some of the
Turks tried to fight, and they were killed. Those who surrendered
were disarmed and driven away into the storm, and the last we saw of
them was when a flash of lightning showed them hurrying
helter-skelter through the hail with hands behind their defenseless heads
trying to ward off hailstones. They looked very ridiculous, and I
remember I laughed.

I? My share of it? A Turkish soldier tried to drive a bayonet
through me. I think he was the last one left in camp (the whole
business can only have lasted three or four minutes, once we were
among them). I shot him with the repeating pistol that had once been
Tugendheim's--this one, see, sahib--and believing the camp was now
ours and the fighting over, I lay down and dragged his body over me
to save me from hailstones, that had made me ache already in every
inch of my body. I rolled under and pulled the body over in one
movement; and seeing the body and thinking a Turk was crawling up to
attack him, one of our troopers thrust his bayonet clean through it.
It was a goodly thrust, delivered by a man who prided himself on
be