His usually calm face was twisted with evil passion, not unmixed with terror. Without the help of his henchmen the weight of the English woman had been too much for him and I saw her huddled body slip from his grasp and fall heavily to the sands. He pulled savagely at his beast’s mouth with the evident intention of backing and trampling her to death. But at that second I resorted to an old Moplah trick which is the pride of our tribe.
SHEIK TO SHEIK
“Azad,” I shrieked,—“your hour has come——.”
Sheik to Sheik
At a distance of ten feet I pointed the muzzle of my gun into the sand and using it as a vaulting pole described an arc in the air. Even so I should have been severely if not fatally wounded for the low-lived creature was alertly awaiting my descent to meet me with an inescapable blow of his razor edged simla.... I say “inescapable” for who can dodge in the air? But wait.... At the very second when by all the laws of gravitation I should fall against the sweeping blade, at the very instant when the wiry desert pirate delivered what he meant should be my death blow ... I pressed the trigger of my gun and fired it into the sand. The recoil of these Arab weapons is enormous. For an appreciable time my flight was not only arrested but reversed.
Bird-like I leaped lightly clear of the whirring blade only to fall with a crash on the baffled nomad’s head, enveloping him in my burnous under the folds of which I dragged him to the ground.
It was now a Sheik to Sheik contest; in-fighting of the most inward character.