"All right! Good for you! Go along!"
He did not stand up and scramble down to the path; he wriggled himself below the farther side of the crest, and presently appeared through the gap, walking coolly along the path, his white suit making him very conspicuous.
I crawled over the crest myself, and made my way to the gap. So did Griffiths.
We saw Jaffa holding up his hands to show that he came in peace, and heard him calling loudly. Then some heads appeared much nearer than I imagined any Arabs to have reached, and gazed at him. He stopped and harangued them, pointing along the crest where we had been lying, sweeping his hands from side to side as if there was a bluejacket behind each rock.
The Arabs were answering him, and he was arguing with them like a father. Then, as the last rays of the sun streamed through the gap, he came sauntering back to us. Webster and his marines had joined me. "They believe me," Jaffa said. "All very frightened—will tell Bedouin—Bedouin throw away rifles."
"You are a splendid chap!" was all I could say.
I told Webster what Jaffa proposed to do, and at his suggestion we all began to show ourselves at different points along the crest—one here, two there, all of us at another place—dodging backwards and forwards, dividing into parties, and going to opposite sides of the gap. I felt as though we were a lot of "supers" in a pantomime, trying to "make believe" that we were an army.
Breathless, we all collected again at the gap.
It was not quite dark yet—not behind us—where the twilight lingered a little, and we could see perhaps fifty yards along the path into the "coffee-cup".
Presently Webster proposed that he and I should take station at either side of the mouth of the gap, and that the two marines should do the same at the other end of it. He suggested this because if we all stayed where we were there would be no room for the Arabs to pass. Griffiths I sent up to the ridge above it, with orders to fire only when told to do so. He did not like leaving us, because it was so dark. In fact we could hardly see each other, and, looking down into the hollow, the darkness seemed like black velvet.