Remington.
He levelled his rifle, but could not see the fore-sight, so as to align
it with the object. For a moment he was nonplussed, but suddenly
remembered having read of a dodge for night shooting, and resolved to
try it.

He had in his pocket a small box of matches, and, taking one of these,
he broke the end off and rubbed in on the fore-sight very gently,
careful not to let it explode, and succeeded in making the little
projection so luminous that he could align it with the back-sight and
the Arab's body. Then he pulled the trigger, and saw the dark figure
leap forward and fall prone. Saw it, indeed, but only in a fraction of
a second, for he stole back to the sand ridge, slipping in another
cartridge as he went.

There he lay still a minute, listening and peering. Presently a tall
figure, which looked gigantic in the dim light, bounded close to him,
with a gun in his left hand, and a spear in his right. He had evidently
made a rush in the direction of the flash, and now stood, looking right
and left for the man who had fired. Harry almost touched him as he
pressed the trigger, and the savage lay at his very feet. "I'll have
his spoils any way," thought he; so he picked up the spear and
Remington, and got back to his men as fast as he could. The Arab
scouts, bothered by these two shots, were probably uncertain about the
movements of the troops, and thought they had shifted their ground since
they had marked them down, and possibly had flanking parties who might
surround them. For they withdrew to a distance, fired a few shots in
the direction where Harry _had been_, which was quite away from the main
body, and the outpost too, and then gave no more trouble for that night.

In the course of the next day the water gave out entirely, and there was
not a drop in the army beyond what some few far-seeing, self-denying
men, had hoarded in their gourds.

Harry had not been one of these, and when the mid-day halt came he
thought he was dying, and fell down in the glare of the sun, senseless.
When he returned to life he found himself under the scanty shade of a
mimosa tree, supported by the strong arm of a man whose sun-burned face
and flowing beard, the loose robe which he wore, and the silk scarf
which surrounded his tarboosh, with the pistol and dagger thrust into a
shawl round his waist, seemed to betoken a native of the country; but
the kindly eyes were those of an Englishman, as were the murmured words,