“They come again! O jackals of the sands, we men are ready—”
“Silence—and lie down!”
Again with that dreaming sense of unreality Blake watched the rush of fluttering figures up the alley. The men were loading and firing as fast as they could, but the rush was scarcely checked. Someone behind him began to croon a wild death-song. A thrown spear flickered before his eyes and struck his head a glancing blow. He looked at it curiously as it clattered down on his boots, and wondered why his hands felt so weak, and why the earth reeled under his feet like an out-rolled ribbon. Then everything was lost in a warm, red mist through which savage faces seemed to peer and yell. Blinded and dizzy, he braced himself for the shock of the charge, the while some voice in his head was buzzing busily, “You will go down as Mannering did, a failure, a failure—”
An utter pity for Mannering filled him. He leaned back against the wall, leveled his revolver as well as he could on his knee, and waited—as Mannering had waited.
“Ya Illah!” shouted the sergeant hoarsely. “Who be these?”
Blake cleared the blood from his eyes and looked. The attack had wavered and had turned upon itself, for a compact little force of ten had filed out from behind a house and fallen upon the desert men in the rear. They were in all degrees of dress and undress. Their leader was very tall and very thin, with a great bush of hair, upon which he wore the remains of a tarboosh, and he had an empty bandoleer round his neck. He and his men were armed variously, ranging from a damaged Martini to an inlaid jezail from the North. These weapons they were using variously, but effectively, in disciplined silence. So much Blake saw in a photographic flash of amazement. Then strength came back to him, and he and the sergeant flung themselves across the dead camel.
“Come on, you black rascals!” shouted Blake, staggering as he stood.
“Follow me, sons of darkness!” yelled the sergeant.
The men obeyed with howls. Caught between two forces, the enemy, fighting like wolves, were driven down alleys, cut down in corners, scattered and broken. In five minutes Blake’s men and their unknown allies were staring and panting under the gate, their work done.
“Now,” suggested the Haussa, patting Blake all over with his delicate black hands in a search for fatal injuries—“now I go and picket that street whence came the good cooking smell.”