"Bless my heart!" muttered Sir Arthur. "What a narrow escape!"
He started toward Makar, but two Arabs laid hold of him and pulled him roughly to one side.
"We'd better go down," said the colonel, and raising his voice he shouted,
"Do you swear to preserve our lives if we come down?"
"By the shades of Mohammed, I swear it. Come down," replied Makar.
"We'll have to trust to his word," said the colonel. "Put the ladder in position."
The ladder, with one end on the ground, failed to reach the top of the parapet by four or five feet. It was a ticklish business to drop down on the upper round, but one by one they accomplished it, and, descending to the ground, were speedily seized and relieved of everything on their persons.
Perhaps Makar doubted his ability to keep his word, for he hurried his prisoners into the residency, away from the turbulent crowd, and left them in the hall in custody of a dozen armed Arabs.
They had not been here five minutes when a commotion was heard outside, and the shattered doors were pulled apart to admit half a dozen weary, blood stained soldiers of the garrison. They were the last survivors, and they told a fearful story.
The fortifications had been attacked, they said, at the same time by the population of the town on one side, and on the south by a vast horde of Arabs and Somalis, who suddenly appeared over the sand-hills mounted on camels. They alone had been made prisoners. All others had been shot, including the officers, the port surgeon, and the native assistant resident.