My brain was hot with the fluster of wondering what I ought to do.
Webster, the corporal of marines, came scrambling down across the gap and up to me, his eyes gleaming. He was bursting to suggest something.
"Out with it!" I said.
"Beg pardon, sir, but the five of us could hold this here gap against a whole regiment, and we'd drive these chaps off like winking. They can't outflank us, they must come along in single file. It would be grand if we could stop 'em."
I could see that for myself; but at the first shot back would go the whole caravan, and if those camels were laden with rifles and ammunition not one should we capture. A better plan rushed through my head—to let them get through and then prevent them getting back!
I would send the head-man to tell Commander Duckworth. He would come along with every man he could land, and do the whole business whilst we stopped their retreat. It would be the grandest haul that had ever been made. Instead of the villagers driving leopards up to us, the Intrepid should drive these Bedouins and their camels; instead of getting a few mangled leopard skins, we would bag the whole caravan and its rifles.
I told Webster. He grinned with delight.
"How many rounds of ammunition have we?" I asked.
We had nearly six hundred between us; that was enough.
Hurriedly I explained to Jaffa what we intended doing. I tore a leaf from his note-book, and with his pencil wrote a message to Commander Duckworth.