into the white brilliance of the night.

"Mind you keep a whole skin, Hassan," he said, as the slim lad with the
white teeth, oily hair, and legs like ivory, stole along the wall, to
drop presently on his belly and make for some palm-trees a hundred yards
away.

The minutes went by in silence; an hour went by; the whole night went
by; Hassan had got beyond the circle of trenchant steel.

They must now abide Hassan's fate; but another peril was upon them.
There was not a goolah of water within the walls!

It was the time of low Nile when all the land is baked like a crust of
bread, when the creaking of the shadoofs and the singing croak of the
sakkia are heard the night long like untiring crickets with throats of
frogs. It was the time succeeding the khamsin, when the skin dries
like slaked lime and the face is for ever powdered with dust; and the
fellaheen, in the slavery of superstition, strain their eyes day and
night for the Sacred Drop, which tells that the flood is flowing fast
from the hills of Abyssinia.

It was like the Egyptian that nothing should be said to Wyndham about
the dearth of water until it was all gone. The house of the Sheikh, and
its garden, where were a pool and a fountain, were supplied from the
great Persian wheel at the waterside. On this particular sakkia had been
wont to sit all day a patient fellah, driving the blindfolded buffaloes
in their turn. It was like the patient fellah, when the Arabs, in
pursuit of Wyndham and his Gippies, suddenly cut in between him and the
house, to deliver himself over to the conqueror, with his hand upon his
head in sign of obedience.

It was also like the gentle Egyptian that he eagerly showed the
besiegers how the water could be cut off from the house by dropping one
of the sluice-gates; while, opening another, all the land around the
Arab encampments might be well watered, the pools well filled, and the
grass kept green for horses and camels. This was the reason that Wyndham
bimbashi and his Gippies, and the Sheikh and his household, faced the
fact, the morning after Hassan left, that there was scarce a goolah
of water for a hundred burning throats. Wyndham understood now why the
Arabs sat down and waited, that torture might be added to the oncoming
death of the Englishman, his natives, and the "friendlies."

All that day terror and ghastly hate hung like a miasma over the
besieged house and garden. Fifty eyes hungered for the blood of Wyndham
bimba