"They are all dogs and sons of dogs, and dogs were their grandsires. No
good is in a dog the offspring of a dog. Whenever these dogs scratch the
ground the dust of poison is in the air, and we die."

"You are impolite, Mustapha Kali," said Dicky coolly, and offered him a
cigarette.

The next three days were the darkest in Dicky Donovan's career. On the
first day there came word that Norman, overwrought, had shot himself. On
the next, Mustapha Kali in a fit of anger threw a native policeman into
the river, and when his head appeared struck it with a barge-pole, and
the man sank to rise no more. The three remaining policemen, two of whom
were Soudanese, and true to Dicky, bound him and shut him up in a hut.
When that evening Fielding refused to play, Dicky knew that Norman's
fate had taken hold of him, and that he must watch his friend every
minute--that awful vigilance which kills the watcher in the end. Dicky
said to himself more than once that day:

"Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman's woe!"

But it was not Dicky who saved Fielding. On the third day the
long-deferred riot broke out. The Copt and the Arab had spread the
report that Fielding brought death to the villages by moving the little
flags on his map. The populace rose.

Fielding was busy with the map at the dreaded moment that hundreds of
the villagers appeared upon the bank and rushed the Amenhotep. Fielding
and Dicky were both armed, but Fielding would not fire until he saw that
his own crew had joined the rioters on the bank. Then, amid a shower of
missiles, he shot the Arab who had first spread the report about the map
and the flags.

Now Dicky and he were joined by Holgate, the Yorkshire engineer of the
Amenhotep, and together the three tried to hold the boat. Every native
had left them. They were obliged to retreat aft to the deckcabin.
Placing their backs against it, they prepared to die hard. No one could
reach them from behind, at least.

It was an unequal fight. All three had received slight wounds, but the
blood-letting did them all good. Fielding was once more himself; nervous
anxiety, unrest, had gone from him. He was as cool as a cucumber. He
would not go shipwreck now "on the reef of Norman's woe." Here was a
better sort of death. No men ever faced it with quieter minds than did
the three. Every instant brought it nearer.

All at once there was a cry and a stampede in the rear of the attacking