Chapter VI: Part 6

To pass the time we made little loopholes between the rocks, through which we could fire towards the gap and down the zigzag path without being seen ourselves. Griffiths asked me, under his breath, if he could smoke his pipe. He asked simply to hear himself speak. He knew that I would refuse, but it was a comfort for him to whisper and a comfort for me to whisper back that the blue smoke might show--a fact he knew well enough.

Then a horrid thought struck me. When we had first reached the gap I had lighted a cigarette, and the burnt match and the end of the cigarette must be lying somewhere there still. If either of them were seen the alarm would be given at once. My whole mind became tortured with picturing them lying there on the bare stones, and I would have given anything in the world to be able to crawl across and try to find them. I did not fear that our tracks would be found: the rocks were quite bare; what loose stones there were between them would not leave a foot-mark; but even now, as the scene comes back to me, I remember that the fear of the burnt match and cigarette end being discovered was horrible at the time.

Just as the strain became almost unbearable, and the impulse to crawl to the gap almost more than I could resist--I had actually risen to my hands and knees--Jaffa gave a low sound, and pressed me down.

Looking through my loophole I saw a tall, fine-looking Arab standing erect at our side of the gap, with a rifle in his hand, turning his head from side to side and then peering below into the chasm beneath.

I felt certain that the white cigarette end must be lying there at his feet, and that in another second he must see it. My heart seemed to stop beating and my ears buzzed. He turned and looked intently at the very heap of boulders behind which we lay. I could have sworn that our eyes met. I had to put my hand to my mouth to prevent me giving way to the frantic desire to yell. Then he disappeared back into the gap, and I breathed more freely.

"He tell others--all safe--see nothing--camels come presently," Jaffa whispered.

In two or three minutes more Arabs--ten, then twenty--crowded through the gap, their rifles held ready and their fierce eyes scanning every rock.

Thank goodness! The towering sides of the "coffee-cup" hid the _Intrepid_ from view.

They moved stiffly, as though tired, talking quietly and squatting on the rocks for a few minutes, until they suddenly stood up, looked back through the gap, slung their rifles over their shoulders, and commenced to scramble down the zigzag path.

They had hardly left the gap when, with a light scraping noise, the ugly head and neck of a camel appeared. He hesitated as he saw the steepness of the path below him, but the camel leader beat him about his head and lips until he condescended to move out of the gap, and with hesitating paces, putting down his huge feet with very great care, started the descent. As his body came into view we saw long sacks or bundles of matting--containing rifles, we felt sure--strapped one on either side of him.

From his quarters stretched taut the halter of the camel "next astern", and another supercilious, scornful, ugly head appeared. Camel after camel (all with their bundles), Arab after Arab (some armed, others simply leading camels) squeezed after each other through the gap in the crest and started down the zigzag path.

I was thankful to notice that the advance-guard seemed in no hurry to reach the bottom, but would go on for a hundred yards, wait for the leading camel to overtake them, and go on again. The longer the time which elapsed before they sighted the _Intrepid_, the more chance would there be that the end of the caravan had already passed through the gap before the alarm was given.

Fifty camels I counted; sixty; sixty-two--three; but as the sixty-fourth head emerged into sight it sank down to the rocks. The wretched brute had fallen on his knees, his neck stretched quite straight as his halter to the camel ahead took the strain. He was dragged bodily forward for a few inches on the smooth rock, then the halter "parted", and his neck curved again.

Another ugly camel's head appeared over his back, but there was no room to pass--the gap was too narrow--and he stopped, swaying his head angrily from side to side.

The Arabs called shrilly one to another---half-dazed they seemed to be, probably from fatigue--and a dozen of them, surrounding the kneeling camel, tried to make him rise to his feet. They prodded him with their rifles and spears, howling execrations, hauled on the broken halter, and beat him on the nose and face. They actually fired rifles close to his face; but he took not the slightest notice. He never even moved his head, holding it up quite motionless, with that extraordinary sarcastic, supercilious look which camels always have, and appeared to be quite unaware of the cruel treatment.

"Camel--finish--much tired--never get up--stay to die," Jaffa whispered.

Two vultures--appearing from nowhere--perched silently on the rocks behind which lay Webster and his two men, saw them, and flapped across to another rock. The Arabs were too busy to notice this or they might have been suspicious.

Then a fine-looking, very richly dressed Arab, with a flowing red[#] patriarchal beard and a green turban pushed past the camel and began to give orders. The ropes securing the bundles were unlashed, the bundles were dragged aside and propped up against the projecting rocks, and then, hauling on those ropes (they passed under the camel's belly), shouting and yelling as though hell had broken loose, the Arabs tried to hoist him to his feet.

[#] The sheikh must have visited Mecca three times, as only after three such pilgrimages are beards dyed red.

The sheikh, or whoever he was, climbed to the top of the gap, the better to superintend operations. A grand-looking chap he was, with a fine "fighting" face, beetling eyebrows, and a great hooked nose.

For a moment I thought again of that cigarette end, and grew sick with fear lest it was there and he should see it. But he was too much interested in the camel to see anything else. Although his men heaved with all their might they only raised the poor beast a few inches, and down it would sink again.

Then the sheikh gave more orders. Men began calling down to those on the paths of the zigzag, immediately underneath the helpless camel, and I saw these hurriedly making large gaps in the line of camels. Two men took hold of the poor brute's halter and hauled the head round until it was touching the hind quarters; the others, gathering at the side of the camel farther from the precipice below, using their rifles as levers and also pressing against his lean flanks, shoved "all together"; the men on the head-rope tugged the head still farther round, and the helpless brute toppled over the edge. Rolling and falling, sliding through the gaps in the lines beneath, bounding from boulder to boulder, he at last "fetched up", two hundred feet below, against a rock, and lay there a shapeless mass of broken back and neck and legs.

The two vultures hopped about excitedly and flapped a little farther down, eyeing the remains with twisted heads.

At another order from the sheikh those bundles were torn open, and I simply "thrilled" to see at least two dozen rifles--brand-new rifles--hauled out. Each man, taking one or two of them as he passed, started off again along the zigzag path after the rest of the camels. The sheikh, clambering down to the path, followed them slowly, and that procession of camels commenced afresh through the gap, camel after camel, until I had counted eighty-three. After the eighty-third came many more, pace by pace, with weary feet, but these were loaded with boxes of ammunition. No attempts had been made to conceal that fact; the boxes were just as they had left the manufacturers, slung in great nets across the camels' backs.

One hundred and thirty-four passed through, counting both those with rifles and those with ammunition; and, last of all, led by two men, a magnificent camel, splendidly caparisoned, with a scarlet, silver-embroidered cloth and with silver-mounted harness, stalked angrily through, followed by two smaller ones with unwieldy burdens. These three were doubtless the sheikh's own camels, his riding camel and the two which carried his tent and the cooking gear and food which he might want on the march.

No more camels came.

I could hardly believe our good fortune. Everything had turned out as we had planned. Looking down into the "coffee-cup" I could see the zigzag of painfully-descending camels; and still farther below them the white figures of the advance-guard, not yet near the bottom or that corner beyond which they would be able to see the _Intrepid_. Not one of those Bedouin Arabs suspected that we six were lying there above them, or that the _Intrepids_ were--possibly--hurrying up to drive them back to us. I would have given much to know what was happening beyond the mountain screen, whether the _Intrepids_ had actually landed, and, if they had landed, how near they were. I reckoned that, by now, if all had happened as I hoped, they would be about halfway up from the village, and in another quarter of an hour, or less, the first of those Arabs would have scrambled out of the bottom of the "coffee-cup" and should see them.

What the time was, or how long it had taken those one hundred and thirty-seven camels to pass through the gap, I had no idea; but the sun was already slanting downwards in the west and was no longer lighting the rocks at the bottom of the "coffee-cup". In fact they had disappeared for some time in the shadow cast by the ridge on which we were hidden, and as the sun gradually sank, so did the sharply-outlined shadow of the ridge and the gap, rising upwards along the opposite face of the chasm, gradually shade the zigzag path higher and higher.

We were fearfully thirsty, but we still dared not shift our cramped positions to get at our water-bottles and make ourselves more comfortable. We simply lay where we were, peering through our loopholes between the rocks at the caravan crawling down the path. Vultures, perched on the rocks around us, craned their bare necks downwards and watched too. It looked like some huge centipede or caterpillar, as each camel carefully felt for his next foothold and swung his long ungainly legs stiffly and cautiously forward. I caught sight of one, the third in a gang or string of five, evidently making very "heavy weather" of it. Whenever the path was sufficiently broad I noticed that an Arab would take hold of his halter to steady him. I pointed out this camel to Jaffa, and scarcely had he whispered: "He fall--soon," when the poor brute stumbled, tried to recover his feet, and fell on one knee, the other leg sprawling over the edge, violently pawing space. The Arab guiding him sprang away, clinging to the rocks, and in a moment the camel had toppled over. I heard wild cries of alarm; the camel leaders on the zigzag below tried desperately to make a gap in their line as they saw what was happening over their heads; but too late. The camel fell; the two camels behind were dragged after him, and the three slid like an avalanche down the rocks, sweeping more camels and one or two Arabs from the narrow zigzags below, bursting their bundles and scattering rifles until they disappeared in the gloom beneath.

It was a horrid sight, and for two or three minutes there was the utmost confusion. The frightened drivers pulled the camels' heads this way and that, and how the poor stupid creatures could keep their foothold at all was marvellous, especially as in many places the path was so narrow that, even from where I was, I could see the "inner" bundles of rifles scraping against the rocks.

We were so intent on watching this that we never turned our heads; but when I did again look across the gap to see whether Webster and his men were still hidden, I had a terrible fright.

Squatting right in the mouth of the gap, and on both edges of it, were a score or more of Arabs, their rifles slung over their shoulders. Jaffa saw them; Griffiths saw them. If they were as frightened as I was they did not show it.

We hardly dared to breathe. There they were, the nearest of them not fifty yards away. They evidently meant to stay, for they had brought firewood, and some of them were trying to set light to it, whilst others were pouring water from a skin into a brass cooking pot.

That anything such as this should happen had never entered my head. I never thought that they would have taken the precaution of leaving a rearguard to protect their line of retreat, and to have done so entirely altered the whole situation and upset all my calculations.

If they took to wandering along that ridge we should be discovered, and if they simply remained where they were we could not fire on the caravan without exposing ourselves to this new force. At the very first shot they would take cover, find out where we lay, and then crawl to the rocks overhead and shoot down. In those first few moments my whole idea was to kill as many as possible before being killed myself.

We watched them with straining eyes. If they had scattered and come near us I should have opened fire. My fingers clutched my rifle to draw it to me, and then loosened again, because they all collected round that cooking pot; the blue smoke came curling up among them, and they evidently had no other thought than to rest and make coffee. They never even troubled to look down to see whether their comrades and the camels were recovering from their disorder, but huddled close together, sheltering their heads from the sun with their dirty cloaks.

There was no immediate danger, so I turned to watch the caravan. Down at the gloomy bottom of the "coffee-cup" I could just distinguish little white figures moving among the boulders---the advance party had at last reached the gorge which led them out into the open. Three or four disappeared round the shoulder of the rocks which shut out my view of the gorge, and I knew that in a moment or two they would sight the _Intrepid_ lying at anchor--and perhaps her advancing men.

I was right. Hardly had they disappeared before back they came into view, very hurriedly, and in a marvellously short space of time the whole of that "coffee-cup" rang with strange cries and shouts as they passed the word up and up its precipitous sides. Along the zigzag path--from one zigzag shouted to the next above--we could hear the news being passed. The camel leaders seized the heads of their camels and stopped them; the Arabs crouching round the gap sprang to their feet as the shouting disturbed them, unslung their rifles, and began talking excitedly.

Down below I saw the green turban of the sheikh as he worked his way along the lowest zigzag, until he too reached the bottom and also disappeared from view.

I would have given all I possessed to know what he could see.

Whatever he had seen I quickly knew that he had seen something which convinced him that the caravan could not hope to escape downwards, because more orders--flurried and high-pitched--were shouted upwards along the zigzag until the deep ravine re-echoed from side to side with them. The camel leaders began unfastening the long halters from the camels, and, very nervously, began to try to turn the tired animals round to face upwards again. Some had room enough and managed to do so; others were in places so narrow, with steep rocks so close to the path, that it was a pure impossibility for a camel to turn. Many camels absolutely refused to try, sinking to their knees; two or three tried, toppled over their clumsy feet, and fell, increasing the horrible confusion as they crashed below.

I realized now that the caravan could neither move upwards nor downwards. If only Commander Duckworth and his people could come quickly the whole of these rifles and ammunition would be theirs. In the joy of knowing this I cared not a jot what happened to us.

The shouting and confusion below us grew greater; every armed Arab was trying frantically to reach the bottom of the path, squeezing past the standing or crawling over the kneeling camels. Directly they reached the bottom they hurried away round the shoulder out of sight.

Some unarmed camel men began shouting to the men round the gap, and ten or twelve of these left the group round that cooking bowl and began the perilous descent. They had not gone more than a hundred yards along the first arm of the zigzag before more shouts came from below; they turned and called back to the others, and the remainder of the rear-guard rose and followed them.

In five minutes we six were alone on that ridge, with the blue curling smoke of that Arab fire between our two little parties.

I had to hold my breath to prevent myself shouting with joy; Jaffa's face was beaming; I heard Griffiths chuckling with delight.

The relief from the awful strain of having that rear-guard so close to us was too much for Webster or one of his men, because for a moment I saw the barrel of a rifle appear behind their rocks and almost expected to hear a cheer. The rifle disappeared as if someone had pulled it down violently.

By this time the caravan was in a state of the most hopeless confusion, totally unable to move either upwards or downwards; many camels had fallen, others were kneeling and refused to move; some were facing one way, some the other. The frightened camel leaders had given up any attempt to restore order and were gradually moving up the path as if to escape themselves, even if they could not bring their camels with them.

Only the upper few zigzags were now in sunlight; the gloom down at the bottom was increasing very rapidly, and unless the Arabs there had worn fairly white clothes we should not have been able to see them as they scrambled among the boulders, to disappear out of sight round that corner.

I realized now that when the sun sank still lower, and the gloom increased still more, we should be able to see nothing whatever to fire at down below. And, too, I had never thought that if they tried to defend the approach to the gorge they might take up a position round that corner where our fire could not reach them. They were evidently doing this, and it upset my scheme still more.

I knew enough of soldiering to know that a small force, well posted behind rocks, could hold the mouth of that ravine (the crack in the "coffee-cup") for an almost indefinite time against a very much superior force. If the _Intrepids_ were actually advancing, and had not brought Maxims or field-guns, these Arabs, with their "backs to the wall", could keep them at bay for the three and a half or four remaining hours of daylight. If so, they might be able during the night to withdraw a remnant of the caravan, and in the dark our five rifles and six hundred cartridges would not stop them.

There was only one thing to do. It sounds heroic, but there was no thought of heroism. Those men still scrambling to the bottom and the men of the rear-guard must be stopped. We five must open fire on them and compel them to remount the zigzag to attack us, and therefore prevent them joining those who had already issued from the "coffee-cup" to defend it against the _Intrepid's_ people.

If I could only have been certain of what was actually happening down there, outside our line of vision, we might have waited; but I did not know, and it was absolutely necessary to do something, and to do that something quickly.

We had to take the risk that perhaps after all the _Intrepids_ had not landed, and that directly we opened fire the whole force of Arabs would turn back and overwhelm us.

I told Jaffa and Griffiths that we must open fire. Griffiths nodded. "Just as you like sir; I'm ready."

Webster must be told, and Jaffa was the man to tell him, because, if he was seen, his clothes at a distance might be mistaken for those of an Arab.

I told him to make his way to the top of the ridge, find out what was happening down in the valley, how far away the horses were, and how many men had been left with them. Then he had to work his way along beneath the sky-line to Webster, and tell him to separate his men, station them on the top of the ridge so that they could not be seen, but, if possible, be able to fire down both ways, and, when I opened fire, to do so himself at every armed Arab in sight.

Jaffa understood, took my field-glasses, and wriggled away up to the ridge, whilst Griffiths and I listened to the noise of grating stones. Then there was silence and what seemed a very long period of waiting whilst we anxiously watched that rear-guard descending. If we did not open fire soon it would be too late.

At last I could stand the strain no longer. Jaffa must have had time to reach Webster, although we had not seen him crawling over the ridge.

Already the leading men of the rear-guard were indistinct in the gloom of the lower zigzags.

"We must chance it," I whispered to Griffiths. "You scramble up till you get a comfortable place where you can see both ways. I'll go halfway towards the gap. When I open fire you commence; aim awfully carefully. Now go!"

We both rose stiffly to our hands and knees, dodged round the rocks, and separated. Some cartridges fell out of my bandolier. I stopped to pick them up: one cartridge might make all the difference. I crawled to the top of the ridge.

I gave one hurried look into the valley, but not a sign of horses or Arabs could I see. I threw myself down and crawled to the edge of a rock from where I could point my rifle into the darkening "coffee-cup". As I did so I saw Webster and his two marines leave their shelter and clamber up the crest on their side of the gap.

There was no time to wait; the excitement was too great to think what would be the result of this new move, too great to realize anything. Not twenty armed Arabs were in sight down in that vast hollow beneath us, little, dirty, whitish, moving figures threading their way past the motionless camels.

I took a very careful aim at the nearest and fired.

*CHAPTER X*

*The Fight in the "Coffee-cup"*

As I fired so did Griffiths; our two rifles went off almost together. We fired again. Three shots also came from Webster's side of the gap.

The effect was immediate.

Those camel-drivers who were abandoning their camels and creeping up to what they thought was safety, stopped; those still squatting among the camels scrambled to their feet; the little string of moving figures, the last of the rear-guard (it was at them we had fired) turned, looked up, and tried to find cover. Unfortunately for them there was no cover where they were, and they showed up against the rocks sufficiently well to make fair targets. We kept on firing at them, firing almost vertically downwards, and presently saw one stumble and fall off the path among the boulders strewn at the bottom. The rest managed to crawl safely down the last "leg" of that zigzag and scattered among those same boulders, hiding one by one.

I had no fear that they would "spot" us yet, because the Lee Metfords made scarcely a streak of smoke. For the same reason they would not be able to know how few we were.

Jaffa, having given my message to Webster, returned and crawled to my side, and told me the comforting news that he had seen the horses, quite two miles away down the valley, with very few men left to guard them.

As I peered below I could see the camel-drivers seeking cover all along the line, squeezing themselves behind rocks or underneath the motionless camels themselves. We made many of them hurry still more by firing at them, until in less than a minute after we had opened fire there was absolutely nothing to be seen on the wall of precipitous rocks except the zigzag line of camels--some standing, others kneeling, some facing upwards, others downwards.

Jaffa cried for me to look.

At the bottom, hastening back round that projecting corner of rock which hid the outlet from the "coffee-cup", many little moving dots appeared. I seized the glasses, and believed I could see the green turban of the sheikh. Dropping them I called to Griffiths to fire, and emptied my magazine into the middle of the group.

It was grand, it was just what I had wanted. The more men we forced to come back within sight the fewer would remain to defend the ravine out of sight, where we could not get at them.

Now if only the _Intrepids_ would hurry up!

I pricked up my ears. One solitary report of a rifle came up from below, dull and muffled. More followed rapidly, and I fully expected to hear bullets coming our way, thinking that the sheikh's party had commenced firing in our direction. However, none came, nor could I see any spurts of flame from among those boulders, although it was so gloomy there that I certainly should have seen them had those fellows been firing at us. The only explanation could be that the firing was outside the ravine, and must be at the _Intrepid's_ people--or perhaps _from_ them. My ears tingled as I tried to decide which.

The volume of fire increased so rapidly that soon I could not distinguish individual shots; there was one continuous grumbling rumble, and suddenly whatever doubt I had was swept away, for I heard the tut-tut-tut-tut of a Maxim--faint but unmistakable.

That settled the question. Griffiths shouted: "They've come, sir; that's their Maxim," and a moment later, to make still more certain, a sudden flash of flame burst out among those boulders at the bottom of the "coffee-cup" and the noise of a bursting shell came bellowing up to us.

I found myself waving my arms and cheering; the others were doing the same. Some vultures which had remained indifferent to the noise of rifle firing flapped heavily up from below. The camel-leaders were peeping down to see what was happening; the camels themselves showed no signs of alarm.

Several more shells bursting there in quick succession so filled the hollow beneath us with smoke that we could see nothing until, very leisurely, the white cloud began drifting upwards, clinging to projecting rocks in little eddies, just like the morning mist in some deep valley before the sun has quite driven it away. Eventually we could actually smell that powder smoke as it escaped over the "rim" of the "coffee-cup", and it was the most beautiful scent we could wish for.

Good little nine-pounder! I'd often seen it on the _Intrepid's_ poop.

The noise of the firing continued without cessation, rising and falling in fierceness, and although we could still hear shells bursting we could not see them. Probably those first few had been fired before the _Intrepids_ knew where the Arabs lay concealed.

Occasionally a different sound came up to us--the puff of a bursting shrapnel--and as I pictured the little balls flinging themselves down among the rocks, and finding out the defending Arabs, I wondered how long they would stand such a trial.

The worst of it was that we could take no part.

Those Arabs who had come back with their sheikh--and the rear-guard, too--had probably wormed their way out of the hollow and were taking part in the defence. There was no one for us to fire at. A few of the camel-leaders were in view, though, as they were unarmed, we did not waste ammunition on them.

All five of us had ceased fire and were listening to the noise of fighting. We tried to distinguish some difference between the Arab firing and the shots from our own people, but that screen of rocks seemed to muffle them and make this impossible. We could not even tell whether the rattle of the Maxim was getting nearer to us; nor could we distinguish the firing of the nine-pounder at all.

Whether hours seemed minutes or minutes hours I could not tell. All I did know was that we were not helping, and that it might be impossible for the _Intrepid's_ people to dislodge the Arabs. What could we do to compel some of them to come back? I racked my brains but could think of nothing.

Then Jaffa suggested shooting the camels. "You shoot camels--they fall down--break rifles--Bedouin lose camels and rifles as well--must come back to save them!"

I did not know; but we might try, however cruel and inhuman it was.

I sent him across to tell Webster to single out the nearest standing camel and fire at it until it fell. I called to Griffiths to fire at the second standing camel, and chose the third myself. It was that magnificently-caparisoned one belonging to the sheikh, standing perhaps four hundred feet below me, entirely unconcerned, and unmistakable in its gorgeous crimson cloth.

I fired very carefully at him. At my second shot he swung his head round as if a fly had bitten him; at my third he lurched forward, fell over the edge, and plunged down. Almost immediately one of those smaller animals toppled over, and both, crashing across zigzag after zigzag, swept more camels in front of them. The bottom was so filled with powder smoke that we could scarcely follow the confused mass of bodies as they hurtled downwards.

The utmost terror broke out among the unarmed Arabs. We could see them leaving their camels and taking shelter under any projecting rock they could reach. I fired at another wretched brute, standing with his bundle of rifles so closely pressed against the side of the precipice that I knew that the path must be very narrow there. Immediately below him, on the next zigzag, was a confused group of animals clustered on a broader path.

At my second shot he staggered, fell right among them, swept three or four off their feet, and another avalanche swept down.

I felt almost sick at what I had done and stopped firing to see what would happen. The others ceased firing too.

Jaffa came back and lay down near me. His one eye was better than my two, so I gave him the glasses.

Then--all at once--bullets came whizzing our way, striking rocks below, above, at each side of us, and screaming away out of the "coffee-cup". The noise of this rifle fire was very different--each shot was a roar, magnified a hundred times, and multiplied a hundred times as it re-echoed from the walls of the chasm.

Thank goodness! At last we had compelled the sheikh to weaken his defence by trying to save his caravan from destruction.

Griffiths and I began firing at more camels; Webster and his men followed suit; more went hurtling down.

We had to do this, however cruel and beastly it was. Unless we kept those fellows away from the mouth of the ravine, the _Intrepids_ might never force their way in.

I could now see the flashes of many rifles--it was a beautiful sight.

Jaffa, excited for the first time, told me that twenty or thirty armed Arabs were climbing up the zigzag. I wished that fifty or a hundred were coming--the more the better. They could not possibly see to aim at us, nor could they know how few we were, and as they emerged from the gloom we could pick them off like starlings on a fence.

Several more camels were hit and fell. Absolute panic had broken out among the unarmed men; many of those on the upper zigzags began creeping and crawling downwards, and I knew that when they met the Arabs coming up to attack us, the confusion on that awful path, and in that awful obscurity below, would be appalling.

After this events began to follow each other very rapidly.

The number of bullets whizzing round us was great, and proved that very many men must have been withdrawn already, back into the hollow; I felt certain that the noise of the Maxim gun seemed louder. If this meant anything it meant that the Arabs were gradually being forced back and that the line of bluejackets was advancing.

Very shortly afterwards the character of the noise of rifle firing altered entirely. There was very little of that muffled rumbling which we had heard before; the noise was sharper and very much louder, and amongst it, quite distinct, I could hear the most distant sound of our own rifles, much like tin tacks being driven into wood with single blows of a big hammer. The bottom of the ravine, too, was lighted up with hundreds and hundreds of rifle flashes, and shells began bursting there again. This made it certain that the Arabs had actually fallen back into the bottom of the "coffee-cup", and I knew that they must be so bunched up together that the shrapnel bullets would soon compel them to scatter up the lower legs of that zigzag. Once there it would be difficult to reach them, but I did not bother about that. They would have to come up and attack us if they wanted to save a single camel.

Jaffa quietly told me that they were already beginning to do this, and then, almost before he had spoken, I heard the faint sound of cheering, and knew that the _Intrepids_ were rushing the mouth of the ravine.

Oh, what a grand, comforting sound that was!

The nine-pounder had stopped firing; so had the Maxim. Probably the guns' crews could not keep pace with the last rush of our fellows, or could not fire without hitting them.

Then I saw spurts of rifle flame spitting out into the gorge, in the very opposite direction from which they had been spluttering before, and knew that they came from our own people.

It was grand! It meant absolute victory and the capture of the entire caravan. I turned and grinned at Jaffa and Griffiths.

"Bedouin come up very fast--plenty come," Jaffa said.

"Well, let them come; so much the better," I thought; but then it struck me that in my excitement I had not noticed how rapidly the sun was setting. The shadow of the ridge above us had long since swallowed up the whole of the opposite face of the walls of the "coffee-cup". What with the powder smoke and the shadow I could not see farther down than about the third zigzag. In the morning it had taken us a full hour to scale the path when it was clear; now these people had to do the same thing when it was blocked with camels. They could not possibly do this in less than two hours, and by then I knew that the sun would have set and that it would be completely dark before one of them could put foot in the gap.

This difficulty now faced us, and I had not foreseen it.

If those Arabs intended to abandon their camels, scale the path, and endeavour to escape back to their horses in the valley, what should we do, or, rather, what would become of us?

So long as they only thought of escape, all would be well. They were probably well beaten now, but directly it became impossible for our people to keep them "on the move" with rifle fire--owing to the lack of light to aim at them--they would begin to recover from their panic. Once they came up to where we were we dare not fire on them, because the flashes of our rifles would have told them immediately that there were only five of us.

If we did not fire they would imagine that we had evacuated the ridge, and the obvious thing for them to do was to occupy it themselves, and wait until morning. If they did that, I realized very well that we could not escape, and, more important still, I knew that it would be impossible for Commander Duckworth to remove a single camel from the path under the fire of their rifles, and that all the nine-pounders and Maxims in the Navy could not dislodge them.

Already rifle fire was dying down at the bottom. It was too dark to aim there, and it would soon be too dark for us to aim either. No bullets had come our way for some time, so I had not them to disturb me as I tried to think what to do.

At first I thought that we all should gather in the gap itself and defend ourselves there, but I gave up that idea because I felt sure they would scale the ridge above it on either side, shoot down, and make an end of us pretty soon.

I did not know what to do.

All I could see now, except for the very occasional flash of a rifle, was a frightened group of camel-drivers huddled together on the third zigzag, apparently waiting for the armed men to join them before they plucked up sufficient courage to start the ascent. It was too dark farther down to see a single camel.

Then Jaffa turned to me and said simply: "I go down path--speak to camel men--tell them you no want kill Bedouin--Bedouin throw rifle away--you won't shoot--if they no throw rifle away you kill them all."

My aunt! What a chap! What a scheme! If it would only work, and if only the camel men could get the Arabs to listen!

"I tell them you have a hundred men on top--they no know--very frightened--very much frightened."

"But they might kill you," I said.

He shook his head, and drew his beloved Mauser pistol. "I go and speak to them."

"All right! Good for you! Go along!"

He did not stand up and scramble down to the path; he wriggled himself below the farther side of the crest, and presently appeared through the gap, walking coolly along the path, his white suit making him very conspicuous.

I crawled over the crest myself, and made my way to the gap. So did Griffiths.

We saw Jaffa holding up his hands to show that he came in peace, and heard him calling loudly. Then some heads appeared much nearer than I imagined any Arabs to have reached, and gazed at him. He stopped and harangued them, pointing along the crest where we had been lying, sweeping his hands from side to side as if there was a bluejacket behind each rock.

The Arabs were answering him, and he was arguing with them like a father. Then, as the last rays of the sun streamed through the gap, he came sauntering back to us. Webster and his marines had joined me. "They believe me," Jaffa said. "All very frightened--will tell Bedouin--Bedouin throw away rifles."

"You are a splendid chap!" was all I could say.

I told Webster what Jaffa proposed to do, and at his suggestion we all began to show ourselves at different points along the crest--one here, two there, all of us at another place--dodging backwards and forwards, dividing into parties, and going to opposite sides of the gap. I felt as though we were a lot of "supers" in a pantomime, trying to "make believe" that we were an army.

Breathless, we all collected again at the gap.

It was not quite dark yet--not behind us--where the twilight lingered a little, and we could see perhaps fifty yards along the path into the "coffee-cup".

Presently Webster proposed that he and I should take station at either side of the mouth of the gap, and that the two marines should do the same at the other end of it. He suggested this because if we all stayed where we were there would be no room for the Arabs to pass. Griffiths I sent up to the ridge above it, with orders to fire only when told to do so. He did not like leaving us, because it was so dark. In fact we could hardly see each other, and, looking down into the hollow, the darkness seemed like black velvet.

Up from that blackness came sounds of men calling to each other; once or twice there were yells of pain or fright, and we strained our ears to hear whether anyone had fallen down. The noises were still far below, but gradually approaching.

We waited, and, with nothing else to do, began to grow fearfully nervous. When one is frightened one gives an enemy credit for all the virtues and valour and skill imaginable, and thinks that he must be cool and collected. At that time I could not conceive how we could escape being killed, and was only certain of one thing--that I'd account for as many Arabs as possible before that happened.

I wondered what our fellows were doing at the bottom, and whether old Popple Opstein was there. I knew that they dared not attempt to climb the path at night.

Jaffa began to coach us as to what we should say when the Arabs came. He made us repeat after him: "Khalli bunduk 'ak", meaning "Throw down your rifle"; "Ist agel", meaning "Hurry up"; and "Ma kattle kum", meaning "Won't shoot you".

We repeated these after him till we knew them. Shall I ever forget them!

Then he said it was time for him to go, and asked me for a box of matches. Luckily I had one--nearly full it was. Why he wanted matches I did not know.

We heard the stones rattling under his feet as he slipped away down the path.

"Can you see me?" he called out.

I shouted back: "Yes."

He went farther down the path, asking at every two or three paces whether we could see him. When our eyes had become accustomed to following his white clothes we could distinguish them at quite a distance.

At last he had gone too far.

"We can't see you!" I called.

He retraced his footsteps until he was again visible. Then he seemed to rise in the air.

"I stand on rock by side of path!" he shouted; "path is under my feet--to my right--very narrow--Bedouin must pass one by one--I speak to them--make them throw away rifles--if no give up rifle I strike match--you see match--fire below match--kill Bedouin."

"Come back!" I yelled. "It's too dangerous!"

"No! I stay!" and nothing would induce him to give up his plucky scheme.

Plucky! Why, it was the bravest job any man could have taken on himself.

Quite close beneath us men began shouting. I hoped these were the camel men warning the armed Arabs to throw away their rifles if they wanted to save their lives. I knew that in a few minutes the first of them would reach Jaffa, and that then the crisis would come. Webster was fidgeting with the bolt of his breech-block and breathing hard.

Already Jaffa was beginning to call out: "Khalli bunduk 'ak! Khalli bunduk 'ak! Ma kattle kum! Ist agel! ist agel!"

Our nerves were very much on edge.

Then footsteps began to approach, softly, cautiously. Jaffa altered his tone of voice. One could almost imagine that he was imploring someone, for his own safety, to throw away his rifle, just as a father might have done. We heard the noise of a rifle falling on to the rocks, then another and another, and, before Webster and I realized it, dim, cloaked figures came up to the gap and stopped there, as if frightened and uncertain what to do.

My heart was in my mouth then, and I said as firmly as I could: "Ma kattle kum! Ist agel!" Webster chipping in with a quaver in his voice, and the two marines and Griffiths bellowing these words behind and above us.

For a moment the Arabs still hesitated, but then they commenced to pass through the gap between Webster and myself.

One, two, half a dozen, a dozen panting figures glided through, and more came--twenty or thirty more--and all the time Jaffa's voice sounded--as calmly as if he were aboard the "_B.A._"--"Khalli bunduk 'ak! khalli bunduk 'ak! Ma kattle kum! ma kattle kum!"

Then I heard Griffiths moving among the rocks overhead, probably shifting himself into a more comfortable position, and the fool must have had his finger on his trigger, because his rifle went off, right in our faces, almost blinding us.

Of course the approaching Arabs thought that we were firing at those who had passed through the gap, and believed that they were going to be murdered.

I cursed Griffiths, and shouted: "Ma kattle kum! ma kattle kum!"

Jaffa yelled to us not to shoot--but no more Arabs came.

Out of the darkness Jaffa's voice sounded, higher pitched now: "Khalli bunduk 'ak," and voices at his feet answered him, angry voices, despairing voices; a crowd of Arabs seemed to be collecting all along the path, and people were calling up from below. I realized that they were refusing to part with their rifles, preferring to have a chance for their lives, or to die, if they had to, with them in their hands.

We were all shouting: "Ma kattle kum! Ist agel!" The two marines, knowing that something was wrong, ran to us.

"Stand by to fire! Be very careful; fire below, and to right of the match, if Jaffa strikes one."

There was a very ominous murmur now. Jaffa was haranguing, expostulating; then he stopped.

"Stand by!" I shouted, bringing my rifle to my shoulder.

A tiny light showed. Jaffa had struck a match.

"Fire!" I yelled, and our four rifles went off together.

We heard groans, a yell of pain, and a body falling. Some of our bullets had gone home.

Jaffa's pistol flashed once; we fired again; it flashed a second time, and then, with a glare and a startling roar, a shell burst not fifty yards below us, and for a second or two lighted up the whole scene--Jaffa on the rock, and those Arabs, a whole line of them, surging up to him. Wild screams came up from a lower path, and told us that men there had been wounded; and Jaffa began in his old voice of calm assurance, "Ma kattle kum! Khalli bunduk 'ak"--he never once stopped talking.

"No shoot," he called to us; "they throw away rifles--they come:" and with the most intense relief from the strain of those few awful seconds I heard the welcome clatter of rifles on the rocks, and that weird procession began again to pass between us.

In their hurry to escape this new terror of the bursting shells the Arabs actually swept the two marines back to the farther end of the gap.

Another shell burst, some way from us, but near enough for all to hear the fragments smashing against the rocks, and enough to break the nerves of any who had already suffered as those poor wretches had done.

I realized now that they were absolutely panic-stricken; they were throwing away their rifles long before they reached Jaffa. They came in one continuous line through the gap, struggling with each other to escape those shells, and to escape from that awful inferno below them.

They were mere terror-stricken fugitives, with no more fight left in them, and Webster and I had to step aside, out of the mouth of the gap, to prevent them carrying us along with them in their flight. We were shouting: "Ist agel! Ma kattle kum!" more to let them know the way to the gap than anything else, for the glare of those shells (which burst dangerously close to us every four or five minutes) blinded everyone, and they could not see the way. In fact, we four standing there, and Jaffa on his rock, were now doing nothing more dangerous than a policeman does in calling out to a crowd to pass along. The marines at the farther end of the gap had forgotten their Arabic words, and forgotten their fright--if they had been frightened--and were shouting: "'Urry up there! keep a-moving! 'Ere, you won't get no front seat if you don't 'urry. Pass along, please! First turn to the right takes you to the 'orses. 'Urry up! 'urry up! The show's about to begin."

Griffiths, on the rocks above, had altered "Ma kattle kum," into "Call the cattle home," and was droning this out under the impression that he was talking the proper "lingo".

As one shell burst I had seen a group of men on one of the paths apparently bearing a comrade. In time they came up to Jaffa, and I heard the sound of voices entreating something. Jaffa called to me that it was the sheikh's son, badly wounded and asking for water.

With shuffling footsteps they bore him up to the gap, and laid him on a rock.

I could well imagine the awful experience he must have had whilst being carried up there amongst his terrified followers, and the tremendous pluck of those who had stuck to him.

They now began crying "Pani! ma!" and Jaffa called out that the sheikh's son wanted water. He, poor chap, did not deign to ask; but for a half-suppressed groan, when they laid him on the rocks, he was absolutely silent.

We had no water (our water-bottles had been emptied long ago), but I remembered that brass cooking bowl in which the rear-guard had started to cook coffee.

It had been placed between some rocks, so had not been upset, and I groped round and found it. There was still some liquid "of sorts" in it. I gave the bowl to the men, and they scooped up a little fluid with their hands and poured it into his mouth. They finished the remainder themselves. Then they picked him up and bore him through the gap as he muttered something, apparently to me--though whether a blessing or a curse I did not know.

The two marines hurried them on with cruel jests, and, before they had passed through, the blaze of another shell lighted up the mournful little band and the red-stained beard of the sheikh. I looked for the green turban, but that was gone.

During the next few minutes perhaps twenty limping, hard-breathing men passed us. After that, though we waited and watched the zigzag path whenever a shell burst, not a single man could be seen.

It was time to stop those shells. They were meant well, but they had done their work and had scared the Arabs; now we should be very relieved if no more came, because many were unpleasantly close.

I ordered the two marines, Webster and Griffiths, to fire three volleys into the air, giving them the word of command, and firing myself. Whether the _Intrepids_ saw these volleys or not, or whether they understood that we were "all correct" or not, I did not know, but they ceased firing.

Then, at last, we knew that we had won, that the morning would show us our prize--the caravan of living camels strung along the zigzag path and the dead ones below. But we were too worn out with the strain of that day's work, and that last hour or more in the gap, to feel any exultation. All we wanted to do was to lie down and sleep, and all we wanted to see was the rising of the blessed sun. We had cursed it a good many times during the last three months; now, how we did long to see it again!

Jaffa came back to us, and we made much of him, praised him, and told him that it was he who had saved us and captured the caravan, that all the credit was due to him.

He simply lay down and slept. Praise from us seemed to mean nothing to him. I let every one of them sleep. I only had to say the word, and they simply subsided where they stood, and straightway fell asleep.

Backwards and forwards by myself I paced from one end to the other of that gap, my rifle in my hand, looking down into the black obscurity as I came to the opening on each side.