Many were shot outright; others, severely wounded, lay wallowing and choking in their blood, and they regarded the victors with a firm, scowling, and defiant expression in their long, thin, tawny faces, and black, bright, glittering eyes, that made them look, as Allan said, like dying eagles.
But, before anything could be done for the survivors, the fatal episode of the day took place.
A little way apart from the group of death and agony, lay a Bedouin, who, though untouched, was partly under his horse, from which he freed himself, and then Cameron advanced to take him prisoner. He was an athletic and gigantic fellow, all bone and sinew, lithe as a serpent, and active as the antelope of his native deserts.
Drawing a long pistol from his girdle, he levelled it at Cameron, but it snapped, on which he flung it furiously at the head of the latter, who ducked, and escaped it.
Several Highlanders now rushed forward, as he had drawn a large and heavy Damascus sabre, but they paused with their hands on their locks when Cameron cried,
'Stand back, my lads, and leave him to me!' And in a moment both their blades were flashing in the setting sun, for Cameron fell upon him claymore in hand.
'May your head be covered by a whirlwind of fire!' hissed the Bedouin in Arabic, through his clenched teeth, while he hewed away without the least intention of surrendering. The hood of his red and white striped burnous had fallen back, and his whole head and face, with flashing eyes and gleaming teeth, were displayed to view.
Cameron was a skilful swordsman, but so was the Bedouin, who was his superior in height and muscular power. Their blades struck red sparks from each other. Cameron forgot to draw his long dirk: but he had 'Sir Garnet's' ugly jack-knife in his left hand, for parrying purposes. How the combat would have terminated, it is difficult to say, but a vile Bedouin, who lay wounded close by, armed with a long, straight sword, with the last effort of expiring nature, writhed himself up from the sand, ran poor Cameron through the body from behind, and fell back dead.
With a hollow groan, Cameron fell backward across him, and was about to receive a finishing stroke from his antagonist, when the latter was shot through the head by Sergeant Farquharson.
This catastrophe rather cooled Allan's humane ideas of succouring the wounded. Very few of the Highlanders had been touched, and these but slightly. However, it seemed as if Cameron was dying. He was speechless, and his mouth at times was filled with blood. It was impossible then to ascertain the exact nature of his wounds, or what part of the body was injured. Allan, full of tenderness, anxiety, and the deepest commiseration, formed a pad of his handkerchief, and, using his sash as a bandage, endeavoured, so far as in him lay, to stop the bleeding, while a litter was improvised by a couple of rifles, with a blanket stretched over them; and the party began to fall back on Matarieh, but often had to halt, for the agony of Cameron was great, and Allan began to despair of getting him conveyed in life to Matarieh, which, as we have said, was nearly ten miles distant, while, to enhance their difficulties, a troop of nearly a hundred Bedouins were visible, pouring down a rocky gorge of the Jebel Mokattam range; so nothing was left to Allan but to continue his retreat, which they seemed slow or disinclined to follow up.