The shock sent me on my knees; and then, seeing a sword lying on the ground in front of me, I gripped hold of this more by instinct than anything else, and I rose to my feet again as quick as lightning.
Quick as I was, however, the brute of an Arab was quicker; and, aiming a terrible slashing cut at me with the tulwar, which had it landed would have decapitated me as clean as a whistle, and the last word of my history been told for good and all—aye, but for a wonderful interposition just as I thought my end had come.
With a piercing yelp, that was succeeded by a deep, savage growl, a white dog bounded up from the ground beside the officer, who had not yet recovered from the effects of the blow that had struck him down.
Would you believe it, this dog was ‘Gyp’!
Making a jump which no one could have imagined a dog of his size capable of doing, he clutched the Arab chief by the throat as he slashed at me, making him stumble back, thus causing the cut that would otherwise have sliced off my head like a carrot to be wasted in the air.
As the big murdering rascal stumbled back, I thrust forth my arm holding the officer’s sword and sent the blade right through the beggar’s stomach up to the hilt.
“Be the powers, me joker,” cried a voice behind me, as sheik and ‘Gyp’ and I all fell together on the ground in one batch, “ye did that well, alannah! Begorrah, it wor roight in his bri’d-basket, sure!”
“My goodness!” I exclaimed, recognising a voice that sounded as familiar to my ears as the bark of ‘Gyp’ just now. “Who’s that?”