"Let's have dinner," said Nevill. "If we have fighting to do, I vote we start with ammunition in our stomachs as well as in our pockets."
Saidee had gone part way up the steps, and was looking over the wall.
"I see something dark, that moves," she said. "It's far away, but I am sure. My eyes haven't been trained in the desert for nothing. It's a caravan—quite a big caravan, and it's coming this way. That's where the shot came from. If they killed the pigeon, or winged it, we're all lost. It would only be childish to hope. We must look our fate in the face. The men will be killed, and I, too. Victoria will be saved, but I think she'd rather die with the rest of us, for Maïeddine will take her."
"It's never childish to hope, it seems to me," said Nevill. "This little fort of ours isn't to be conquered in an hour, or many hours, I assure you."
"And we have no intention of letting you be killed, or Miss Ray carried off, or of dying ourselves, at the hands of a few Arabs," Knight added. "Have confidence."
"In our star," Victoria half whispered, looking at Stephen. They both remembered, and their eyes spoke, in a language they had never used before.
In England, Margot Lorenzi was wondering why Stephen Knight had not come to meet her, and angrily making up her mind that she would find out the reason.
L
Somehow, they all contrived to take a little food, three watching from the wall-towers while the others ate; and Saidee prepared strong, delicious coffee, such as had never been tasted in the bordj of Toudja.