CHAPTER X

*

*The Fight in the "Coffee-cup"*

As I fired so did Griffiths; our two rifles went off almost together. We fired again. Three shots also came from Webster's side of the gap.

The effect was immediate.

Those camel-drivers who were abandoning their camels and creeping up to what they thought was safety, stopped; those still squatting among the camels scrambled to their feet; the little string of moving figures, the last of the rear-guard (it was at them we had fired) turned, looked up, and tried to find cover. Unfortunately for them there was no cover where they were, and they showed up against the rocks sufficiently well to make fair targets. We kept on firing at them, firing almost vertically downwards, and presently saw one stumble and fall off the path among the boulders strewn at the bottom. The rest managed to crawl safely down the last "leg" of that zigzag and scattered among those same boulders, hiding one by one.

I had no fear that they would "spot" us yet, because the Lee Metfords made scarcely a streak of smoke. For the same reason they would not be able to know how few we were.

Jaffa, having given my message to Webster, returned and crawled to my side, and told me the comforting news that he had seen the horses, quite two miles away down the valley, with very few men left to guard them.

As I peered below I could see the camel-drivers seeking cover all along the line, squeezing themselves behind rocks or underneath the motionless camels themselves. We made many of them hurry still more by firing at them, until in less than a minute after we had opened fire there was absolutely nothing to be seen on the wall of precipitous rocks except the zigzag line of camels--some standing, others kneeling, some facing upwards, others downwards.

Jaffa cried for me to look.

At the bottom, hastening back round that projecting corner of rock which hid the outlet from the "coffee-cup", many little moving dots appeared. I seized the glasses, and believed I could see the green turban of the sheikh. Dropping them I called to Griffiths to fire, and emptied my magazine into the middle of the group.

It was grand, it was just what I had wanted. The more men we forced to come back within sight the fewer would remain to defend the ravine out of sight, where we could not get at them.

Now if only the _Intrepids_ would hurry up!

I pricked up my ears. One solitary report of a rifle came up from below, dull and muffled. More followed rapidly, and I fully expected to hear bullets coming our way, thinking that the sheikh's party had commenced firing in our direction. However, none came, nor could I see any spurts of flame from among those boulders, although it was so gloomy there that I certainly should have seen them had those fellows been firing at us. The only explanation could be that the firing was outside the ravine, and must be at the _Intrepid's_ people--or perhaps _from_ them. My ears tingled as I tried to decide which.

The volume of fire increased so rapidly that soon I could not distinguish individual shots; there was one continuous grumbling rumble, and suddenly whatever doubt I had was swept away, for I heard the tut-tut-tut-tut of a Maxim--faint but unmistakable.

That settled the question. Griffiths shouted: "They've come, sir; that's their Maxim," and a moment later, to make still more certain, a sudden flash of flame burst out among those boulders at the bottom of the "coffee-cup" and the noise of a bursting shell came bellowing up to us.

I found myself waving my arms and cheering; the others were doing the same. Some vultures which had remained indifferent to the noise of rifle firing flapped heavily up from below. The camel-leaders were peeping down to see what was happening; the camels themselves showed no signs of alarm.

Several more shells bursting there in quick succession so filled the hollow beneath us with smoke that we could see nothing until, very leisurely, the white cloud began drifting upwards, clinging to projecting rocks in little eddies, just like the morning mist in some deep valley before the sun has quite driven it away. Eventually we could actually smell that powder smoke as it escaped over the "rim" of the "coffee-cup", and it was the most beautiful scent we could wish for.

Good little nine-pounder! I'd often seen it on the _Intrepid's_ poop.

The noise of the firing continued without cessation, rising and falling in fierceness, and although we could still hear shells bursting we could not see them. Probably those first few had been fired before the _Intrepids_ knew where the Arabs lay concealed.

Occasionally a different sound came up to us--the puff of a bursting shrapnel--and as I pictured the little balls flinging themselves down among the rocks, and finding out the defending Arabs, I wondered how long they would stand such a trial.

The worst of it was that we could take no part.

Those Arabs who had come back with their sheikh--and the rear-guard, too--had probably wormed their way out of the hollow and were taking

## part in the defence. There was no one for us to fire at. A few of the

camel-leaders were in view, though, as they were unarmed, we did not waste ammunition on them.

All five of us had ceased fire and were listening to the noise of fighting. We tried to distinguish some difference between the Arab firing and the shots from our own people, but that screen of rocks seemed to muffle them and make this impossible. We could not even tell whether the rattle of the Maxim was getting nearer to us; nor could we distinguish the firing of the nine-pounder at all.

Whether hours seemed minutes or minutes hours I could not tell. All I did know was that we were not helping, and that it might be impossible for the _Intrepid's_ people to dislodge the Arabs. What could we do to compel some of them to come back? I racked my brains but could think of nothing.

Then Jaffa suggested shooting the camels. "You shoot camels--they fall down--break rifles--Bedouin lose camels and rifles as well--must come back to save them!"

I did not know; but we might try, however cruel and inhuman it was.

I sent him across to tell Webster to single out the nearest standing camel and fire at it until it fell. I called to Griffiths to fire at the second standing camel, and chose the third myself. It was that magnificently-caparisoned one belonging to the sheikh, standing perhaps four hundred feet below me, entirely unconcerned, and unmistakable in its gorgeous crimson cloth.

I fired very carefully at him. At my second shot he swung his head round as if a fly had bitten him; at my third he lurched forward, fell over the edge, and plunged down. Almost immediately one of those smaller animals toppled over, and both, crashing across zigzag after zigzag, swept more camels in front of them. The bottom was so filled with powder smoke that we could scarcely follow the confused mass of bodies as they hurtled downwards.

The utmost terror broke out among the unarmed Arabs. We could see them leaving their camels and taking shelter under any projecting rock they could reach. I fired at another wretched brute, standing with his bundle of rifles so closely pressed against the side of the precipice that I knew that the path must be very narrow there. Immediately below him, on the next zigzag, was a confused group of animals clustered on a broader path.

At my second shot he staggered, fell right among them, swept three or four off their feet, and another avalanche swept down.

I felt almost sick at what I had done and stopped firing to see what would happen. The others ceased firing too.

Jaffa came back and lay down near me. His one eye was better than my two, so I gave him the glasses.

Then--all at once--bullets came whizzing our way, striking rocks below, above, at each side of us, and screaming away out of the "coffee-cup". The noise of this rifle fire was very different--each shot was a roar, magnified a hundred times, and multiplied a hundred times as it re-echoed from the walls of the chasm.

Thank goodness! At last we had compelled the sheikh to weaken his defence by trying to save his caravan from destruction.

Griffiths and I began firing at more camels; Webster and his men followed suit; more went hurtling down.

We had to do this, however cruel and beastly it was. Unless we kept those fellows away from the mouth of the ravine, the _Intrepids_ might never force their way in.

I could now see the flashes of many rifles--it was a beautiful sight.

Jaffa, excited for the first time, told me that twenty or thirty armed Arabs were climbing up the zigzag. I wished that fifty or a hundred were coming--the more the better. They could not possibly see to aim at us, nor could they know how few we were, and as they emerged from the gloom we could pick them off like starlings on a fence.

Several more camels were hit and fell. Absolute panic had broken out among the unarmed men; many of those on the upper zigzags began creeping and crawling downwards, and I knew that when they met the Arabs coming up to attack us, the confusion on that awful path, and in that awful obscurity below, would be appalling.

After this events began to follow each other very rapidly.

The number of bullets whizzing round us was great, and proved that very many men must have been withdrawn already, back into the hollow; I felt certain that the noise of the Maxim gun seemed louder. If this meant anything it meant that the Arabs were gradually being forced back and that the line of bluejackets was advancing.

Very shortly afterwards the character of the noise of rifle firing altered entirely. There was very little of that muffled rumbling which we had heard before; the noise was sharper and very much louder, and amongst it, quite distinct, I could hear the most distant sound of our own rifles, much like tin tacks being driven into wood with single blows of a big hammer. The bottom of the ravine, too, was lighted up with hundreds and hundreds of rifle flashes, and shells began bursting there again. This made it certain that the Arabs had actually fallen back into the bottom of the "coffee-cup", and I knew that they must be so bunched up together that the shrapnel bullets would soon compel them to scatter up the lower legs of that zigzag. Once there it would be difficult to reach them, but I did not bother about that. They would have to come up and attack us if they wanted to save a single camel.

Jaffa quietly told me that they were already beginning to do this, and then, almost before he had spoken, I heard the faint sound of cheering, and knew that the _Intrepids_ were rushing the mouth of the ravine.

Oh, what a grand, comforting sound that was!

The nine-pounder had stopped firing; so had the Maxim. Probably the guns' crews could not keep pace with the last rush of our fellows, or could not fire without hitting them.

Then I saw spurts of rifle flame spitting out into the gorge, in the very opposite direction from which they had been spluttering before, and knew that they came from our own people.

It was grand! It meant absolute victory and the capture of the entire caravan. I turned and grinned at Jaffa and Griffiths.

"Bedouin come up very fast--plenty come," Jaffa said.

"Well, let them come; so much the better," I thought; but then it struck me that in my excitement I had not noticed how rapidly the sun was setting. The shadow of the ridge above us had long since swallowed up the whole of the opposite face of the walls of the "coffee-cup". What with the powder smoke and the shadow I could not see farther down than about the third zigzag. In the morning it had taken us a full hour to scale the path when it was clear; now these people had to do the same thing when it was blocked with camels. They could not possibly do this in less than two hours, and by then I knew that the sun would have set and that it would be completely dark before one of them could put foot in the gap.

This difficulty now faced us, and I had not foreseen it.

If those Arabs intended to abandon their camels, scale the path, and endeavour to escape back to their horses in the valley, what should we do, or, rather, what would become of us?

So long as they only thought of escape, all would be well. They were probably well beaten now, but directly it became impossible for our people to keep them "on the move" with rifle fire--owing to the lack of light to aim at them--they would begin to recover from their panic. Once they came up to where we were we dare not fire on them, because the flashes of our rifles would have told them immediately that there were only five of us.

If we did not fire they would imagine that we had evacuated the ridge, and the obvious thing for them to do was to occupy it themselves, and wait until morning. If they did that, I realized very well that we could not escape, and, more important still, I knew that it would be impossible for Commander Duckworth to remove a single camel from the path under the fire of their rifles, and that all the nine-pounders and Maxims in the Navy could not dislodge them.

Already rifle fire was dying down at the bottom. It was too dark to aim there, and it would soon be too dark for us to aim either. No bullets had come our way for some time, so I had not them to disturb me as I tried to think what to do.

At first I thought that we all should gather in the gap itself and defend ourselves there, but I gave up that idea because I felt sure they would scale the ridge above it on either side, shoot down, and make an end of us pretty soon.

I did not know what to do.

All I could see now, except for the very occasional flash of a rifle, was a frightened group of camel-drivers huddled together on the third zigzag, apparently waiting for the armed men to join them before they plucked up sufficient courage to start the ascent. It was too dark farther down to see a single camel.

Then Jaffa turned to me and said simply: "I go down path--speak to camel men--tell them you no want kill Bedouin--Bedouin throw rifle away--you won't shoot--if they no throw rifle away you kill them all."

My aunt! What a chap! What a scheme! If it would only work, and if only the camel men could get the Arabs to listen!

"I tell them you have a hundred men on top--they no know--very frightened--very much frightened."

"But they might kill you," I said.

He shook his head, and drew his beloved Mauser pistol. "I go and speak to them."

"All right! Good for you! Go along!"

He did not stand up and scramble down to the path; he wriggled himself below the farther side of the crest, and presently appeared through the gap, walking coolly along the path, his white suit making him very conspicuous.

I crawled over the crest myself, and made my way to the gap. So did Griffiths.

We saw Jaffa holding up his hands to show that he came in peace, and heard him calling loudly. Then some heads appeared much nearer than I imagined any Arabs to have reached, and gazed at him. He stopped and harangued them, pointing along the crest where we had been lying, sweeping his hands from side to side as if there was a bluejacket behind each rock.

The Arabs were answering him, and he was arguing with them like a father. Then, as the last rays of the sun streamed through the gap, he came sauntering back to us. Webster and his marines had joined me. "They believe me," Jaffa said. "All very frightened--will tell Bedouin--Bedouin throw away rifles."

"You are a splendid chap!" was all I could say.

I told Webster what Jaffa proposed to do, and at his suggestion we all began to show ourselves at different points along the crest--one here, two there, all of us at another place--dodging backwards and forwards, dividing into parties, and going to opposite sides of the gap. I felt as though we were a lot of "supers" in a pantomime, trying to "make believe" that we were an army.

Breathless, we all collected again at the gap.

It was not quite dark yet--not behind us--where the twilight lingered a little, and we could see perhaps fifty yards along the path into the "coffee-cup".

Presently Webster proposed that he and I should take station at either side of the mouth of the gap, and that the two marines should do the same at the other end of it. He suggested this because if we all stayed where we were there would be no room for the Arabs to pass. Griffiths I sent up to the ridge above it, with orders to fire only when told to do so. He did not like leaving us, because it was so dark. In fact we could hardly see each other, and, looking down into the hollow, the darkness seemed like black velvet.

Up from that blackness came sounds of men calling to each other; once or twice there were yells of pain or fright, and we strained our ears to hear whether anyone had fallen down. The noises were still far below, but gradually approaching.

We waited, and, with nothing else to do, began to grow fearfully nervous. When one is frightened one gives an enemy credit for all the virtues and valour and skill imaginable, and thinks that he must be cool and collected. At that time I could not conceive how we could escape being killed, and was only certain of one thing--that I'd account for as many Arabs as possible before that happened.

I wondered what our fellows were doing at the bottom, and whether old Popple Opstein was there. I knew that they dared not attempt to climb the path at night.

Jaffa began to coach us as to what we should say when the Arabs came. He made us repeat after him: "Khalli bunduk 'ak", meaning "Throw down your rifle"; "Ist agel", meaning "Hurry up"; and "Ma kattle kum", meaning "Won't shoot you".

We repeated these after him till we knew them. Shall I ever forget them!

Then he said it was time for him to go, and asked me for a box of matches. Luckily I had one--nearly full it was. Why he wanted matches I did not know.

We heard the stones rattling under his feet as he slipped away down the path.

"Can you see me?" he called out.

I shouted back: "Yes."

He went farther down the path, asking at every two or three paces whether we could see him. When our eyes had become accustomed to following his white clothes we could distinguish them at quite a distance.

At last he had gone too far.

"We can't see you!" I called.

He retraced his footsteps until he was again visible. Then he seemed to rise in the air.

"I stand on rock by side of path!" he shouted; "path is under my feet--to my right--very narrow--Bedouin must pass one by one--I speak to them--make them throw away rifles--if no give up rifle I strike match--you see match--fire below match--kill Bedouin."

"Come back!" I yelled. "It's too dangerous!"

"No! I stay!" and nothing would induce him to give up his plucky scheme.

Plucky! Why, it was the bravest job any man could have taken on himself.

Quite close beneath us men began shouting. I hoped these were the camel men warning the armed Arabs to throw away their rifles if they wanted to save their lives. I knew that in a few minutes the first of them would reach Jaffa, and that then the crisis would come. Webster was fidgeting with the bolt of his breech-block and breathing hard.

Already Jaffa was beginning to call out: "Khalli bunduk 'ak! Khalli bunduk 'ak! Ma kattle kum! Ist agel! ist agel!"

Our nerves were very much on edge.

Then footsteps began to approach, softly, cautiously. Jaffa altered his tone of voice. One could almost imagine that he was imploring someone, for his own safety, to throw away his rifle, just as a father might have done. We heard the noise of a rifle falling on to the rocks, then another and another, and, before Webster and I realized it, dim, cloaked figures came up to the gap and stopped there, as if frightened and uncertain what to do.

My heart was in my mouth then, and I said as firmly as I could: "Ma kattle kum! Ist agel!" Webster chipping in with a quaver in his voice, and the two marines and Griffiths bellowing these words behind and above us.

For a moment the Arabs still hesitated, but then they commenced to pass through the gap between Webster and myself.

One, two, half a dozen, a dozen panting figures glided through, and more came--twenty or thirty more--and all the time Jaffa's voice sounded--as calmly as if he were aboard the "_B.A._"--"Khalli bunduk 'ak! khalli bunduk 'ak! Ma kattle kum! ma kattle kum!"

Then I heard Griffiths moving among the rocks overhead, probably shifting himself into a more comfortable position, and the fool must have had his finger on his trigger, because his rifle went off, right in our faces, almost blinding us.

Of course the approaching Arabs thought that we were firing at those who had passed through the gap, and believed that they were going to be murdered.

I cursed Griffiths, and shouted: "Ma kattle kum! ma kattle kum!"

Jaffa yelled to us not to shoot--but no more Arabs came.

Out of the darkness Jaffa's voice sounded, higher pitched now: "Khalli bunduk 'ak," and voices at his feet answered him, angry voices, despairing voices; a crowd of Arabs seemed to be collecting all along the path, and people were calling up from below. I realized that they were refusing to part with their rifles, preferring to have a chance for their lives, or to die, if they had to, with them in their hands.

We were all shouting: "Ma kattle kum! Ist agel!" The two marines, knowing that something was wrong, ran to us.

"Stand by to fire! Be very careful; fire below, and to right of the match, if Jaffa strikes one."

There was a very ominous murmur now. Jaffa was haranguing, expostulating; then he stopped.

"Stand by!" I shouted, bringing my rifle to my shoulder.

A tiny light showed. Jaffa had struck a match.

"Fire!" I yelled, and our four rifles went off together.

We heard groans, a yell of pain, and a body falling. Some of our bullets had gone home.

Jaffa's pistol flashed once; we fired again; it flashed a second time, and then, with a glare and a startling roar, a shell burst not fifty yards below us, and for a second or two lighted up the whole scene--Jaffa on the rock, and those Arabs, a whole line of them, surging up to him. Wild screams came up from a lower path, and told us that men there had been wounded; and Jaffa began in his old voice of calm assurance, "Ma kattle kum! Khalli bunduk 'ak"--he never once stopped talking.

"No shoot," he called to us; "they throw away rifles--they come:" and with the most intense relief from the strain of those few awful seconds I heard the welcome clatter of rifles on the rocks, and that weird procession began again to pass between us.

In their hurry to escape this new terror of the bursting shells the Arabs actually swept the two marines back to the farther end of the gap.

Another shell burst, some way from us, but near enough for all to hear the fragments smashing against the rocks, and enough to break the nerves of any who had already suffered as those poor wretches had done.

I realized now that they were absolutely panic-stricken; they were throwing away their rifles long before they reached Jaffa. They came in one continuous line through the gap, struggling with each other to escape those shells, and to escape from that awful inferno below them.

They were mere terror-stricken fugitives, with no more fight left in them, and Webster and I had to step aside, out of the mouth of the gap, to prevent them carrying us along with them in their flight. We were shouting: "Ist agel! Ma kattle kum!" more to let them know the way to the gap than anything else, for the glare of those shells (which burst dangerously close to us every four or five minutes) blinded everyone, and they could not see the way. In fact, we four standing there, and Jaffa on his rock, were now doing nothing more dangerous than a policeman does in calling out to a crowd to pass along. The marines at the farther end of the gap had forgotten their Arabic words, and forgotten their fright--if they had been frightened--and were shouting: "'Urry up there! keep a-moving! 'Ere, you won't get no front seat if you don't 'urry. Pass along, please! First turn to the right takes you to the 'orses. 'Urry up! 'urry up! The show's about to begin."

Griffiths, on the rocks above, had altered "Ma kattle kum," into "Call the cattle home," and was droning this out under the impression that he was talking the proper "lingo".

As one shell burst I had seen a group of men on one of the paths apparently bearing a comrade. In time they came up to Jaffa, and I heard the sound of voices entreating something. Jaffa called to me that it was the sheikh's son, badly wounded and asking for water.

With shuffling footsteps they bore him up to the gap, and laid him on a rock.

I could well imagine the awful experience he must have had whilst being carried up there amongst his terrified followers, and the tremendous pluck of those who had stuck to him.

They now began crying "Pani! ma!" and Jaffa called out that the sheikh's son wanted water. He, poor chap, did not deign to ask; but for a half-suppressed groan, when they laid him on the rocks, he was absolutely silent.

We had no water (our water-bottles had been emptied long ago), but I remembered that brass cooking bowl in which the rear-guard had started to cook coffee.

It had been placed between some rocks, so had not been upset, and I groped round and found it. There was still some liquid "of sorts" in it. I gave the bowl to the men, and they scooped up a little fluid with their hands and poured it into his mouth. They finished the remainder themselves. Then they picked him up and bore him through the gap as he muttered something, apparently to me--though whether a blessing or a curse I did not know.

The two marines hurried them on with cruel jests, and, before they had passed through, the blaze of another shell lighted up the mournful little band and the red-stained beard of the sheikh. I looked for the green turban, but that was gone.

During the next few minutes perhaps twenty limping, hard-breathing men passed us. After that, though we waited and watched the zigzag path whenever a shell burst, not a single man could be seen.

It was time to stop those shells. They were meant well, but they had done their work and had scared the Arabs; now we should be very relieved if no more came, because many were unpleasantly close.

I ordered the two marines, Webster and Griffiths, to fire three volleys into the air, giving them the word of command, and firing myself. Whether the _Intrepids_ saw these volleys or not, or whether they understood that we were "all correct" or not, I did not know, but they ceased firing.

Then, at last, we knew that we had won, that the morning would show us our prize--the caravan of living camels strung along the zigzag path and the dead ones below. But we were too worn out with the strain of that day's work, and that last hour or more in the gap, to feel any exultation. All we wanted to do was to lie down and sleep, and all we wanted to see was the rising of the blessed sun. We had cursed it a good many times during the last three months; now, how we did long to see it again!

Jaffa came back to us, and we made much of him, praised him, and told him that it was he who had saved us and captured the caravan, that all the credit was due to him.

He simply lay down and slept. Praise from us seemed to mean nothing to him. I let every one of them sleep. I only had to say the word, and they simply subsided where they stood, and straightway fell asleep.

Backwards and forwards by myself I paced from one end to the other of that gap, my rifle in my hand, looking down into the black obscurity as I came to the opening on each side.

Away down in the valley which had swallowed up those panic-stricken Arabs I sometimes heard voices, gradually growing fainter and fainter in the distance. Below, in the "coffee-cup", occasionally weird noises came up, perhaps from those poor wretched camels still huddled on that awful path, with their unwieldy burden of rifles flattened against the rocks. Once or twice a momentary twinkle of light flickered far below; probably the bluejackets were striking matches to light their pipes. It was a comfort to think that someone down there still kept watch.

Presently a land-breeze began gently sweeping through the gap, on its way to the sea; so warm and heavy was it that it made the desire to sleep an agony. How I could have remained awake without my pipe, I do not know; that, and perhaps my hunger, kept me going.

Hyenas, jackals, or wolves began howling in the valley; others, along the walls of the "coffee-cup", answered them. They must have scented blood, and appeared to be gathering all along the ridge, but did not venture down, staying there howling and whining in piercing cadences. I set their hateful music to a tune of "Keep awake! keep awake! one turn more! twelve paces! one turn more!"

There was no means of judging the time, but perhaps it was an hour after I had been left to myself when two wretched Arabs came stumbling up, or hopping up, dragging broken legs after them, and supporting each other. Poor, wretched, miserable creatures! the agony they must have suffered would have made me feel pity for them had not my brain been absolutely numbed with the craving for sleep, and unable to think of anything except the necessity for fighting it.

At last, when I thought that I must have done more than my share of "sentry-go", I simply collapsed on top of Webster. I remember him scrambling to his feet, but I am certain that I was sound asleep before I lay flat on the ground. It was no use being ashamed of myself; I was not. It was physically impossible for me to keep awake any longer, and, as it turned out, it was physically impossible for any of us to keep awake.

When I did awake it was broad daylight; the sun was just appearing over the opposite rim of the "coffee-cup", and dear old Popple Opstein was bending over me, shaking me. The gap was full of the _Intrepid's_ bluejackets, and they were trying to shake life into the others. Jaffa was leaning against a rock.

"Water! water!" was the first thing I said, and Popple Opstein, with his face that strange violet colour, his eyes ablaze with excitement, gave me his water-bottle.

"We couldn't climb the path in the dark, Martin, old chap," he burst out. "We tried, but we couldn't do it. Two of our chaps fell over and broke legs or arms, so the commander brought us back.

"Thank goodness that he did call you back!" I said. "You would have all been killed. It's bad enough in daylight, with nothing blocking it."

"It took us three hours to get up," he said. "We counted more than a hundred camels on the path, and you knocked over any number. They are lying in heaps at the bottom!"

He gave me a ship's biscuit. Nothing I have ever tasted tasted so appetizing as that did, and he spared me another mouthful of water to wash the last crumbs down my throat.

Then I lighted a cigarette, and together we walked through the gap to see if there were any traces of the disarmed Arabs. The valley was empty and silent, shrouded in shadow. Not a single living thing could we see except a few vultures.

We walked back again and looked into the "coffee-cup". The zigzag path was now swarming with villagers and bluejackets trying to restore order among the camels. Close to the rock where Jaffa had stood, rifles lay scattered everywhere.

"We must have captured a couple of thousand rifles and thirty or forty thousand rounds of ammunition," my chum said exultingly. "It's the finest haul, they tell me, that's been made for years."

I don't mind saying that if he had told me that there was a steaming hot dish of bacon and eggs and a potful of coffee waiting for me round the corner I should have been much more excited--just at this time.

*