The soldier next them had sat down abruptly, and leaned forward over his knees. His movement and attitude were so natural that it was hard to realise that he had been shot through the head. He neither stirred nor groaned. His comrades bent over him for a moment, and then, shrugging their shoulders, they turned their dark faces to the Arabs once more. Belmont picked up the dead man's Martini and his ammunition-pouch.
“Only three more rounds, Cochrane,” said he, with the little brass cylinders upon the palm of his hand. “We've let them shoot too soon, and too often. We should have waited for the rush.”
“You're a famous shot, Belmont,” cried the Colonel. “I've heard of you as one of the cracks. Don't, you think you could pick off their leader?” “Which is he?”
“As far as I can make out, it is that one on the white camel on their right front. I mean the fellow who is peering at us from under his two hands.”
Belmont thrust in his cartridge and altered the sights. “It's a shocking bad light for judging distance,” said he. “This is where the low point-blank trajectory of the Lee-Metford comes in useful. Well, we'll try him at five hundred.” He fired, but there was no change in the white camel or the peering rider.
“Did you see any sand fly?”
“No; I saw nothing.” “I fancy I took my sight a trifle too full.” “Try him again.” Man and rifle and rock were equally steady, but again the camel and chief remained unharmed. The third shot must have been nearer, for he moved a few paces to the right, as if he were becoming restless.
Belmont threw the empty rifle down with an exclamation of disgust.
“It's this confounded light,” he cried, and his cheeks flushed with annoyance. “Think of my wasting three cartridges in that fashion! If I had him at Bisley I'd shoot the turban off him, but this vibrating glare means refraction. What's the matter with the Frenchman?”
Monsieur Fardet was stamping about the plateau with the gestures of a man who has been stung by a wasp. “S'cré nom! S'cré nom!” he shouted, showing his strong white teeth under his black waxed moustache. He wrung his right hand violently, and as he did so he sent a little spray of blood from his finger-tips. A bullet had chipped his wrist. Headingly ran out from the cover where he had been crouching, with the intention of dragging the demented Frenchman into a place of safety, but he had not taken three paces before he was himself hit in the loins, and fell with a dreadful crash among the stones. He staggered to his feet, and then fell again in the same place, floundering up and down like a horse which has broken its back. “I'm done!” he whispered, as the Colonel ran to his aid, and then he lay still, with his china-white cheek against the black stones. When, but a year before, he had wandered under the elms of Cambridge, surely the last fate upon this earth which he could have predicted for himself would be that he should be slain by the bullet of a fanatical Mohammedan in the wilds of the Libyan desert.