Responding to these words, the janissaries made an onward rush that almost overpowered us. With great difficulty, however, we managed to make a stand against it, firing our rifles and slashing at our adversaries in frantic desperation, just managing at length to repulse them sufficiently to prevent our banner from falling into their hands. A serious attack had been made upon Zoraida and Hadj Absalam, but both had struggled with redoubled energy, succeeding in warding off the repeated murderous blows levelled at them.
Those moments were critical ones. Each of us felt that a second rush as powerful as the first would totally annihilate us.
Our fate, indeed, seemed sealed.
Just as our enemies fell back a little, I managed to draw so close to Zoraida that my hand brushed her silken robe. As I reined up, she shouted an order, a dozen rifles rang out, and in a moment the conflict became even more fiercely contested than before. One by one, however, our men dropped their arms and fell from their horses, never to mount again, and I could see that, with the exception of the couple of dozen old men whom we had left on the previous day in charge of the women, camels, and tents, nearly three-fourths of our body had been killed or wounded.
Beside Zoraida I sat in the bright moonbeams, anxiously on the alert. When I saw how critical was our position, I became regardless of her injunctions, and cried—
“It is useless! Let us fly and save ourselves!”
With a strange fire in her beautiful eyes, she turned quickly upon me.
“No,” she answered calmly. “Have courage, O Cecil! Dost thou not remember what stake thou hast in the result of this attack?”
Again the rifles of the defenders belched forth their ominous red flashes, as amid the din and rattle a perfect hail of bullets whistled about us; yet she seemed to shed a charmed halo around her, for neither Hadj Absalam nor myself were struck. With teeth firmly set, we struggled on, cutting, slashing, striking death at every blow, amid a scene indescribably weird and ghastly, until each well-delivered volley of the defenders felled dozens of our band to earth, and I knew that the slaughter of my undaunted companions-in-arms would be complete.
The fortune of the fight trembled in the balance. Zoraida’s cool, inspiring demeanour and encouraging words stirred the nomadic Ennitra to bold, fearless deeds, and many were the feats of prowess the brigands of the plains in that dark hour accomplished. My life was saved by one of the faithful followers who had assisted Halima and myself to escape. A gigantic, fierce-eyed negro slave of the Fáda had rushed towards me, brandishing his crooked jambiyah, and I had fired, missing him. Next moment he closed with me, gripping my throat with long, sinewy fingers, as with a demoniacal, exultant laugh he raised his knife to plunge it deep into my breast, when Halima’s slave, fortunately noticing my peril, raised his sword and clave my enemy’s skull so swiftly that the warm blood spurted forth over my hands. Without uttering a sound, the dark, evil-visaged brute who intended to kill me staggered and fell back stone dead, while I remained breathless but unharmed.