"I should think, Muley, they will send all their camels back to the wells, perhaps with one of their wounded men and another. The wounded man will remain there in charge of them, the other will bring two or three of them out with full water-skins; he can make the journey there and back every two days and can bring enough water for the men and horses. I don't think they will send the horses away. They will do with a small portion of water, and if greatly needed they could start from here at sunset, keeping among the sand-hills until out of sight, reach the wells, drink their fill, and be back in the morning. If they attack at night it will be between the setting of the moon and daybreak."
"I should hardly think they would do that," Edgar said. "We shall soon restore the thorn hedge, and they would scarcely be mad enough to attack us when they know that we have that protection and are almost as strong as they are. If it were not that we do not want them to know the way to the wady I should say that we could venture to sally out and march back, but that would cost us a good many lives, for the horsemen could ride on ahead, dismount, open fire on us from the sand-hills, and be off again on their horses when we went up to attack them. No, I think we cannot do better than follow our original plan. Our water will hold out for a week, and by putting ourselves on short allowance at the end of a day or two if we find that they are determined to wait, we can make it last for nearly a fortnight, and long before that your tribesmen ought to be here, and in that case only the mounted men will escape us. Three of their horses lie dead outside, so there are but five left."
"Ah! if we could but cut them all off," the sheik said in a tone of fury, "then we might be safe for a long time. If any of them get back to tell the tale the Mahdi will send a force next time that there will be no resisting."
Edgar sat thinking for a minute or two.
"I have an idea, sheik," he said at last. "Send off one of your boys as soon as the moon sets, let him go to El Bahr Nile. When your friends arrive he will tell them of the repulse we have given the dervishes, and that there are now but twenty-five of them, several of whom are doubtless wounded. Tell them that if but ten men come to aid us we can defeat them; let the other ten, that is if twenty arrive, start first, and turning off the track make a detour and come down at night upon the wady. There they will find but one man with the camels; but they must not show themselves, but must hide close at hand. Then when the horsemen arrive they must make an ambush, and either shoot them down as they pass or let them go through to the wells. They are sure to wait there for a few hours, and they can fall upon them there. Let the men be ordered to fire only at the horses; they can deal with the men after they have dismounted. The great thing is to prevent the horsemen getting away."
"Mashallah, Muley, your plan is a grand one. Had you been bred in the desert you could not have better understood our warfare. What a pity it is that you are a Kaffir! You would have been a great sheik had you been a true believer."
"Gordon Pasha was a Kaffir," Edgar replied, "but he was greater than any sheik."
"He was a great man indeed," the sheik said; "he was a very father to the people; there was no withstanding him. We fought against him, for our interest lay with the slave-dealing, but he scattered us like sheep. Yes, Gordon was a great man though, as you say, he was a Kaffir;" and the sheik sat in silence, meditating upon what seemed to him an inscrutable problem.
While the conversation had been going on, the bullets of the enemy continued to whistle round the zareba.
"I will try and put a stop to that," Edgar said; "we have a rifle here as much better than theirs, as theirs are superior to the guns of your tribesmen."