I gasped a word of thanks to my deliverer, but, shrugging his shoulders, he merely answered, “The Ennitra assist those who fight with them side by side, be they Infidels or Allah’s chosen. Thou art our friend and the friend of the Lalla Halima, therefore we are loyal unto thee, and require no thanks for obeying that which is written.”
“May Allah honour thee!” I said, fervently thankful, fully realising how narrowly I had once again escaped a violent end.
“And may He be as a lamp shining upon thy path,” the man murmured in pious response.
In the desperate onslaught made a few minutes later by the soldiers of the Sultan, now reinforced by a squadron of horsemen who had approached with all speed from the opposite side of the city, Zoraida and I found ourselves together in the thick of the fray. Grappling with their enemies, the Ennitra, with all their bellicose instincts now thoroughly aroused, closed with them in a terrible death-struggle. Each desert-wanderer, determined to sell his life dearly, bade defiance to the great body of janissaries, eunuchs, palace guards, and soldiers, and, armed to the teeth, cut, thrust, and charged, pressing the defenders hard, bearing the brunt of the fight, and showing a bold front in a manner truly astonishing.
With their white drapery flowing in the wind, as they spurred on their horses in repeated efforts to successfully storm the gate of the Fáda, my companions fought like demons. But the defenders held together in solid phalanx, and repulsed us time after time, until many more of our bold, undaunted horsemen lay weltering in their blood.
Again and again Zoraida, whose slim form still showed under the dark standard of the outlaws in the very midst of the desperate conflict, shouted words of encouragement, and each time we swept forward upon the stubborn ranks of the janissaries, only to be ignominiously driven back under a withering fusillade of bullets. Hadj Absalam’s gruff voice, raised in desperate imprecation, roared above the din of the fray, but he was unheeded. They obeyed only the commands of the Daughter of the Sun, whom they still implicitly believed would lead them to victory.
In deadly embrace we fought with ferocious strength, grappling our adversaries, and using our knives with horrible fiendishness. Janissaries and eunuchs, slashed and mutilated by the dexterous blows of my dauntless fellow-horsemen, fell groaning to earth, staining the burnouses of the outlaws with their blood; but even then, when slight success aroused redoubled energy within us, any hope of the investment of the Fáda still seemed utterly forlorn.
Suddenly above the noise and tumult there was a loud rumbling, which at first I thought was distant thunder.
“Hearken!” eagerly shouted Zoraida, at that moment only a few feet from me. “Give ear unto me! Lo! it is the rolling of the Drum of Nâr! Fight on! Our brothers are advancing! For evil men Hell, the Worst life; for the righteous the Best Mind, Paradise!”
With a shrill whoop, the Ennitra took up the last sentence as a war-cry, and, with courage strengthened by the knowledge that at last assistance was at hand, dashed forward wildly towards the great arched gateway, many of them being in their reckless onslaught impaled upon the defenders’ spears. Then, ere five minutes had passed, with loud, reassuring shouts, mingling with the monotonous thumping of the Drum of Victory, the three bodies of the Ennitra, who, it afterwards appeared, had effected a junction near Tanou-n-Toungaïden, made a vigorous demonstration, by which, in the course of a quarter of an hour, the defenders became hemmed in between two galling fires.