ness. Ahmed Bey and Gregory rode backwards and forwards along the
line, keeping them together, and encouraging them.

"We shall get in without fighting," the Bey said. "We should have heard
before this, had they been there. Do you think that they would have
remained so long in the town, if they had learned that there are but
two hundred of us, and one steamer? Mahmud would never have forgiven
them, had they not fallen upon us and annihilated us. I only hope that
two hundred will have been left there. It will add to our glory, to
have won a battle, as well as taken the town. Your children will talk
of it in their tents. Your women will be proud of you, and the men of
the black regiments will say that we have shown ourselves to be as
brave as they are.

"We will halt for half an hour, rest the camels, and then push on at
full speed again; but mind, you have my orders: if you should see the
enemy coming in force, you are to ride at once to the river bank,
dismount, and make the camels lie down in a semicircle; then we have
but to keep calm, and shoot straight, and we need not fear the
Dervishes, however many of them there may be."

After the halt they again pushed forward. Gregory saw, with pleasure,
that the Arabs were now thoroughly wound up to fighting point. The same
vigilant watch was kept up as before; but the air of gloom that had
hung over them, when they first started, had now disappeared; each man
was ready to fight to the last. As the town was seen, the tension was
at its highest; but the pace quickened, rather than relaxed.

"Now is the moment!" the Bey shouted. "If they are there, they will
come out to fight us. If, in five minutes, they do not appear; it will
be because they have all gone."

But there were no signs of the enemy, no clouds of dust rising in the
town, that would tell of a hasty gathering. At last, they entered a
straggling street. The women looked timidly from the windows; and then,
on seeing that their robes did not bear the black patches worn by the
Dervishes, they broke into loud cries of welcome.

"Are the Dervishes all gone?" Ahmed Bey asked, reining in his camel.

"They are all gone. The last left four days ago."

The sheik waved his rifle over his head; and his followers burst into
loud shouts of triumph, and pressed on, firing their muskets in the
air. As they proceeded, the natives poured out from their houses in
wild delight. The Arabs kept on, till they reached the house form