At that moment a couple of the Arabs made at the pair of us; and I had quite enough to do to guard off the shower of cuts one of them delivered round my devoted head, his curved scimitar whirling about me in all directions and the sunlight from above making it flash so that it dazzled my eyes.
However, a lucky drive with my sword-bayonet through the rascal’s throat stopped his little game; for the swarthy Arab dropped his scimitar instanter, with a gurgle of rage and an upward roll of his eyes, “like a dying duck in a thunder-storm,” as father used to say, tumbling down all of a heap as dead as mutton.
Hardly had I done with him when, strange to say, I heard the bark of a dog.
This was very unusual, all Mahometans hating dogs and believing them to be possessed of the Devil.
Besides, somehow or other, I seemed to recognise the bark as familiar to me; for, believe me, the voices of dogs and their respective expressions of grief or joy, though sounding the same to alien ears, are as distinct to such as are accustomed to hear them frequently as the voices of human beings of our acquaintance or any individual.
Before I had time to think, however, though my senses were all on the alert from hearing the dog’s bark, I saw that the naval officer whom we had rushed up to help at Mr Chisholm’s instigation, was engaged in a fierce hand-to-hand fight with two Arabs, one of whom, a tall, lean Somali, with a peculiar sort of turban round his head, unlike any of those sported by the rest of the gang, I was certain was no less a personage than the man, or ‘sheik’ as he was called, Abdalah, the leader of the Somalis.
As I noted this, the officer fell; but, ere the big Arab, who drew back a long spear that he wielded, could give him the fatal thrust he intended, I was upon him.
Clubbing my rifle, I dealt a vicious blow at the savage brute’s head which shivered the spear wherewith he tried to guard it.
The rascal, though, was not discomfited; for, clutching hold of a tulwar he carried loosely in a sash of the old dressing-gown-like garment he wore, he almost slashed my nose off, the barrel of my Martini only just preventing me from losing all my good looks!