Again the attackers prepared to execute their enveloping tactics. They were now within two hundred yards.
"Come on, you brutes!" shouted Dacres furiously. "Come on, and have a jolly good thrashing."
The possibility of being wiped out never entered his mind. He was now a fighter who "saw red."
A yell burst from the horsemen; then, simultaneously, the whole crowd broke into a gallop, the hoofs of the horses making a terrific din upon the hard ground.
Suddenly, just as the attack was about to split into two sections, one of the men reined in his horse, almost pulling it on its haunches. He pointed towards the sky, with fear and astonishment written plainly on his dark brown features.
The next moment the Indians had turned tail and were riding for dear life.
Dacres looked over his shoulder, half expecting to have fallen out of the frying-pan into the fire, and that the cause of the panic was the approach of a body of Valderian roughriders.
But to his astonishment and delight he beheld the "Meteor" flying at full speed and momentarily looming up larger and larger.
Dacres sprang to his feet and emptied both revolvers at his retreating foes. They were already out of range, but the shots served to attract the attention of the airship in case Whittinghame had not yet sighted his absent comrade.
Five minutes later the "Meteor"—still gigantic in spite of the fact that she had been shortened by two hundred feet—alighted upon the grassy plain The instant the rope-ladder was dropped men hastened to the assistance of Dacres and his stricken friend, foremost amongst them being Whittinghame and Antoine de la Fosse.