If the French officers heading the expeditionary force imagined the Sultan of El-Ammeh had come out to surrender, they quickly discovered their mistake.
He had come out to fight; and what was more, fight well and recklessly against a force that, if inferior in numbers, was vastly superior in arms.
Presently the shells no longer shrieked above El-Ammeh. They were aimed at it.
From her gallery Pansy saw the two forces meet.
Then she could look no longer. Men fell in the sand and rose no more. And any one of them might be her lover.
She went back to her room and crouched there in terror; her father and friends all forgotten at the thought of the man who might be lying dead in the sand.
As the morning wore on, the din of battle grew nearer. Every now and again a shell got home. There were screams of terrified people; the heavy fall of masonry; the moans and cries of the injured.
Once Pansy thought her end had come.
A shell struck the palace. The place rocked to its foundations. There was the thunder of falling masonry as if the four walls of her room were crashing down upon her.
She closed her eyes and waited.