s of their foes they literally swarmed up the ladder until the
whole window-space was filled with a horrid nightmare of bearded,
swarthy faces, of sinewy, grasping hands, of tossing spears and
flourished fire-arms.

Suddenly, with an exclamation of pain, Hassan dropped his revolver and
clapped his hand to his side; and Anstice felt, with a wild thrill of
dismay in all his veins, that the fight was practically over for them
now. The odds were too great--one well-directed bullet and he too would
be disabled, powerless to protect the girl for whose sake he longed so
ardently to win the day.

"My God, Iris, we're beaten!" Even as he spoke he was firing into the
midst of the mass of packed faces at the window; and he heard her words,
spoken in a passionate whisper as one hears strange, whispered sentences
in a dream:

"No--no!" Iris had been listening to another sound--the sound of hope,
of renewed life--and now, in the moment of his discouragement, she
whispered the glorious truth. "Listen--they're here--the men have come
in time--oh, don't you hear them shouting to us to hold on--for a
minute----"

The next moment a wild cry from Hassan rent the air; and as the crowd of
fierce faces seemed, suddenly, to recede as a wave washes backwards on
the shore, Anstice knew, with a great uplifting of his spirit, that help
had indeed come--miraculously--in time to save the day....

* * * * *

Answering shouts from the desert, the drumming of horses' hoofs, the
clamour of voices upraised in cries of encouragement--these were the
sounds which Anstice, almost unbelieving, heard at last; and as the
desert men began to retreat, tumbling over themselves and each other in
their haste to flee before this new enemy was upon them, Anstice turned
to Iris with a laugh of purest happiness.

"They have come--you're safe now, thank God!"

"We're all safe, thanks to you," she answered him with shining eyes; and
as he threw his empty revolver aside she held out both her hands to him
and he clasped them joyfully.

"They have come--and so soon! I never dared to hope they would be here
before to-night at earliest!"

"Nor I--but they are here!" He released her hands and turned to greet
the rest of the little garrison, who, having heard the clamour, had
realized they were saved, and came pouring in to hear the story of the
night's encounter.

* * * * *

At the same moment a fierc