ays the same hot and stifling
formation, the smell of dust and leather, the same boltlike rush of
the enemy, the same pressure on the weakest side, the few minutes of
hand-to-hand scuffle, and then the silence of the desert, broken only
by the yells of those whom their handful of cavalry attempted to purse.
They had become careless. The camel-guns spoke at intervals, and the
square slouched forward amid the protesting of the camels. Then came the
attack of three thousand men who had not learned from books that it is
impossible for troops in close order to attack against breech-loading
fire.

A few dropping shots heralded their approach, and a few horsemen led,
but the bulk of the force was naked humanity, mad with rage, and armed
with the spear and the sword. The instinct of the desert, where there
is always much war, told them that the right flank of the square was the
weakest, for they swung clear of the front. The camel-guns shelled them
as they passed and opened for an instant lanes through their midst, most
like those quick-closing vistas in a Kentish hop-garden seen when the
train races by at full speed; and the infantry fire, held till the
opportune moment, dropped them in close-packing hundreds. No civilised
troops in the world could have endured the hell through which they came,
the living leaping high to avoid the dying who clutched at their heels,
the wounded cursing and staggering forward, till they fell--a torrent
black as the sliding water above a mill-dam--full on the right flank of
the square.

Then the line of the dusty troops and the faint blue desert sky overhead
went out in rolling smoke, and the little stones on the heated ground
ant the tinder-dry clumps of scrub became matters of surpassing
interest, for men measured their agonised retreat and recovery by these
things, counting mechanically and hewing their way back to chosen pebble
and branch. There was no semblance of any concerted fighting. For aught
the men knew, the enemy might be attempting all four sides of the square
at once. Their business was to destroy what lay in front of them, to
bayonet in the back those who passed over them, and, dying, to drag
down the slayer till he could be knocked on the head by some avenging
gun-butt.

Dick waited with Torpenhow and a young doctor till the stress grew
unendurable. It was hopeless to attend to the wounded till the attack
was repulsed, so the three moved forward gingerly towards the weakest
s