"I think so, sheik. It need be but a small one some twelve feet square inside. They will have to cross the open to attack us, and outside we can protect it by a facing of prickly shrubs."
"We will do it!" the sheik said in a tone of determination, springing to his feet. "One can but die once, and if we succeed it will be a tale for the women of our tribe to tell for all time."
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE ZAREBA.
No sooner had the sheik decided to carry out Edgar's plan than he rapidly issued his orders. In five minutes the whole of the inhabitants of the douar were at work, the boys going out to fetch the camels, the men cutting down the long grass near the well and laying it in great bundles very tightly pressed together, the women cooking a large supply of flat cakes for the party. In two hours the preparations were completed and the twenty men moved off from the oasis. They travelled until ten o'clock in the evening. By the light of the moon, which was four days short of full, the sheik and Edgar selected a point for the erection of the zareba. It was a patch of rock cropping up from the summit of a sand-hill that fell away from it on all sides, and was just about the size required for the zareba. The camels were unloaded and the bundles of forage laid down side by side and formed into a square, the wall being some four feet thick and two feet high. The whole party, including the boys who were to take back the camels, then set to work to cut thorny bushes. These were piled thickly at the foot of the rock all round, being kept in their places by stakes driven into the sand and by ropes interlacing them. The work was only completed just as daylight broke.
"I don't think," Edgar said, walking round the little fort, "that any men can get through this hedge of thorns until they have pulled it away piece by piece, and that, with us lying in shelter above and firing down upon them, will be a difficult task indeed."
The Arabs, who had obeyed the chief's orders with reluctance and had been very silent upon the journey out, were now jubilant, feeling convinced that they could beat off the attack of such a force as that which they heard was advancing. The camels were now sent off, and they had scarcely disappeared among the sand-hills when an Arab was seen approaching on a camel.
"It is our scout," the sheik said; "he brings us news."
He tied a cloth to the end of a spear and waved it. A minute later the camel's course was changed and the rider soon arrived outside the fort.