Red
Sea!

But as we had come in the nick of time before, even so now. We
swooped all unexpected on the rear of the Wassmuss men, taking
ourselves by surprise as much as them, for we had thought the fight
yet miles away. Echoes make great confusion in the mountains. It was
echoes that had kept the Wassmuss men from hearing us, although we
made more noise than an avalanche of fighting animals. Straightway
we all looked for Wassmuss, and none found him, for the simple
reason that he was not there; a prisoner we took told us afterward
that Wassmuss was too valuable to be trusted near the border, where
he might escape to his own folk. There is no doubt Wassmuss was
prisoner among the Kurds,--nor any doubt either that he directs all
the uprising and raiding and disaffection in Kurdistan and Persia.
As Ranjoor Singh said of him--a remarkable man, and not to be
despised.

Seeing no Wassmuss, it occurred to me at last to listen to orders!
Ranjoor Singh was shouting to me as if to burst his lungs. The Kurds
were fighting on foot, taking cover behind boulders, and he was
bidding me take my command and find their horses.

I found them, sahib, within an ace of being too late. They had left
them in a valley bottom with a guard of but twenty or thirty men,
who mistook us at first for Kurds, I suppose, for they took no
notice of us. I have spent much time wondering whence they expected
mounted Kurds to come; but it is clear they were so sure of victory
for their own side that it did not enter their heads to suspect us
until our first volley dropped about half of them.

Then the remainder began to try to loose the horses and gallop away,
and some of them succeeded; but we captured more than half the
horses and began at once to try to get them away into the hills. But
it is no easy matter to manage several hundred frightened horses
that were never more than half tamed in any case, and many of them
broke away from us and raced after their friends. Then I sent a
messenger in a hurry to Ranjoor Singh, to say the utmost had been
attempted and enough accomplished to serve his present purpose, but
the messenger was cut down by the first of a crowd of fugitive
Kurds, who seized his reins and fought among themselves to get his
horse.

Seeing themselves taken in the rear, the Kurds had begun to fall
back in disorder, and had actually burst through our mounted ranks
in a wild effort to get to their own horses; for like ourselves, the
Kur