complete failure.

It did not matter while he himself was not conscious of it; but now that
the armour-plate of conceit protecting his honest mind had been torn
away on the reefs of foolish deeds, it mattered everything. For when his
conceit was peeled away, there was left a crimson cuticle of the Wyndham
pride. Certainly he could not attack the Arabs--he had had his eternal
fill of sorties.

Also he could not wait for the relief party, for his Gippies and the
friendlies were famishing, dying of thirst. He prayed for night. How
slowly the minutes, the hours passed; and how bright was the moon
when it rose! brighter even than it was when Hassan crept out to steal
through the Arab lines.

.....................

At midnight, Wyndham stole softly out of a gate in the garden wall,
and, like Hassan, dropping to the ground, crept towards a patch of maize
lying between the house and the river. He was dressed like a fellah,
with the long blue yelek, and a poor wool fez, and round the fez was a
white cloth, as it were to protect his mouth from the night air, after
the manner of the peasant.

The fires of the enemy were dying down, and only here and there Arabs
gossiped or drank coffee by the embers. At last Wyndham was able to drop
into the narrow channel, now dry, through which, when the sluice was
open and the sakkia turned, the water flowed to the house. All went well
till he was within a hundred yards of the wheel, though now and again he
could hear sentries snoring or talking just above him. Suddenly he heard
breathing an arm's length before him, then a figure raised itself and a
head turned towards him. The Arab had been asleep, but his hand ran
to his knife by instinct--too late, for Wyndham's fingers were at his
throat, and he had neither time nor chance to cry Allah! before the
breath left him.

Wyndham crept on. The sound of the sakkia was in his ears--the long,
creaking, crying song, filling the night. And now there arose the Song
of the Sakkia from the man at the wheel:

"Turn, O Sakkia, turn to the right, and turn to the left;
The heron feeds by the water side--shall I starve in my onion-field!
Shall the Lord of the World withhold his tears that water the land--
Turn, O Sakkia!"

... The hard white stars, the cold blue sky, the far-off Libyan hills
in a gold and opal glow, the smell of the desert, the deep swish of the
Nile, the Song of the Sakkia....

Wyndham's heart beat faster, his bl