"Do your duty, men!" he gasped. "Let not your enemies crush you!"
But the mêlée was awful. Once again our partisans were driven back, and the street was strewn with bodies in frightful array, left where they fell, uncovered, unattended.
The thick black cloud of smoke which hung over the City in the Clouds and on either side of it obscured the rising dawn and intensified the horrors of the awful drama. Fires raged in every direction, making the air hot; it was close through the smoke cloud above and the absence of wind, fœtid with the odour of human blood that lay in pools in every street and splashed upon the houses. The sight was majestic, terrible, never-to-be-forgotten; in the midst of it the terror and stupefaction were almost beyond human endurance. On all sides were heard the roar of flames, the breaking of timbers and the crashing in of roofs and walls. Fire and sword reigned throughout the magnificent capital of Mo; its people were being swept into eternity with a relentless brutality that was absolutely fiendish.
Into the hearts of the survivors of the gallant force who had so readily constructed our barricade and so valiantly defended it, despair had entered. There was now no hope for the success of our cause. The forces of tyranny, oppression and misrule were fast proving the victors, and in that fearful indiscriminate shooting down of men, women and children that was proceeding, all knew that sooner or later they must fall victims.
I had seen nothing of Kona or Goliba since the wrecking of our barricade, but Omar, I was gratified to observe, was stationed at a window of the opposite house from which he directed well-aimed shots at those below. A body of fully five hundred infantry were besieging the house wherein a large number of our comrades had taken shelter, determined to put them to the sword; yet so desperate was the resistance that they found it impossible to enter, and many were killed in their futile endeavours. At length I noticed that while the main body covered the movements of several of their companions the latter were preparing a mine by which to blow it up. With the half-dozen men beside me we kept up a galling fire upon them, but all in vain. The mine was laid; only a spark was required to blow the place into the air.
Knowing that if such a catastrophe were accomplished we, too, must suffer being in such close proximity to it, we waited breathlessly, unable to escape from the vicinity of the deadly spot.
Suddenly, as one man, more fearless than the others, bent to fire the mine, the soldiers, with one accord, rushed back, and scarce daring to breathe I waited, fearing each second to see the house and its garrison shattered to fragments and myself receive the full force of the explosive.
But at that instant, even as I watched, a loud exultant shout broke upon my ear, and looking I saw approaching from the opposite end of the street a great crowd of people rushing forward, firing rapidly as they came.
They were our comrades. Their shouts were shouts of victory!
"Kill them!" they cried. "Let not one escape. They have killed our brothers; let us have revenge! The Naya shall die, and Omar shall be our Naba!"
