Jaffa understood, took my field-glasses, and wriggled away up to the ridge, whilst Griffiths and I listened to the noise of grating stones. Then there was silence and what seemed a very long period of waiting whilst we anxiously watched that rear-guard descending. If we did not open fire soon it would be too late.
At last I could stand the strain no longer. Jaffa must have had time to reach Webster, although we had not seen him crawling over the ridge.
Already the leading men of the rear-guard were indistinct in the gloom of the lower zigzags.
"We must chance it," I whispered to Griffiths. "You scramble up till you get a comfortable place where you can see both ways. I'll go halfway towards the gap. When I open fire you commence; aim awfully carefully. Now go!"
We both rose stiffly to our hands and knees, dodged round the rocks, and separated. Some cartridges fell out of my bandolier. I stopped to pick them up: one cartridge might make all the difference. I crawled to the top of the ridge.
I gave one hurried look into the valley, but not a sign of horses or Arabs could I see. I threw myself down and crawled to the edge of a rock from where I could point my rifle into the darkening "coffee-cup". As I did so I saw Webster and his two marines leave their shelter and clamber up the crest on their side of the gap.
There was no time to wait; the excitement was too great to think what would be the result of this new move, too great to realize anything. Not twenty armed Arabs were in sight down in that vast hollow beneath us, little, dirty, whitish, moving figures threading their way past the motionless camels.
I took a very careful aim at the nearest and fired.
CHAPTER X
The Fight in the "Coffee-cup"