"Shoot," she replied, "as fast and as straight as any of them."
"My dear lady," I said, "if four rifles won't keep off a hundred, five won't. If five can, four can. . . . And I must slink off. . . ."
I could have wept. We stood silent, staring at each other.
"Your say goes, Major. I suppose you are right," answered the girl, and my heart leapt up again. "But I hate myself--and I loathe you. . . ."
All worked like slaves to get the four swiftest camels saddled and loaded with light and indispensable things. The fourth one, although a mehari, had to carry one tente d'abri and bed, water, and food.
I could hardly trust myself to speak as I wrung Dufour's hand, nor when I patted the shoulder of my splendid Achmet. Djikki put my hand to his forehead and his heart, and then knelt to kiss my feet.
The drop of comfort in the bitter suffering of that moment was my knowledge that these splendid colleagues of mine--white man, brown man, and black--knew that what I was doing was my Duty and that what they were about to do was theirs. . . .
I bade Suleiman fight for his life; he was too new a recruit to the Service to be expected to fight for an ideal. . . .
Miss Vanbrugh and Maudie mounted their mehari--Maudie still as cheerful and plucky as ever, and, I am certain, thrilled, and still hopeful of tender adventure.
I should be surprised if her novelette-turned brain and rubbish-fed imagination did not even yet picture the villainous desert wolves, who were so close on our trail, as the brave band of a "lovely" Desert Sheikh in hot pursuit of one Maudie Atkinson, of whose beauty and desirability he had somehow heard. . . .
There was a shout from Suleiman again. Something moving on the horizon.
I gave the word to start, and took a last look round.
My men's camels were barraked out of danger. Each man had a hundred rounds of ammunition, a girba of water, a little heap of dates, and an impregnable position behind a convenient rock. . . .
Four against scores--perhaps hundreds. . . . But in a narrow pass. . . . If only the Touareg would content themselves with shooting, and lack the courage to charge.
"Say, Major," called Mary, "let those desert dead-beats hear six rifles for a bit! They may remember an urgent date back in their home-town, to see a man about a dog or something. . . . Think we're a regular sheriff's posse of vigilantes or a big, bold band of Bad Men. . . ."
Dare I? It would take a tiny trifle of the load of misery from my shoulders. . . .
I would!
We brought our camels to their knees again, and rejoined the garrison of the pass, the men of this little African Thermopylæ. . . .
Miss Vanbrugh chose her rock, rested her rifle on it, sighted, raised the slide of her back-sight a little--all in a most business-like manner.
Maudie crouched at my feet, behind my rock, and I showed her how to work the bolt of my rifle, after each shot. I was one-handed, and Maudie had, of course, never handled a rifle in her life.
I waited until we could distinguish human and animal forms in the approaching cloud of dust, and then gave the range at 2,000 metres. "Fixe!" I cried coolly thereafter, for the benefit of my native soldiers. "Feux de salve. . . . En Joue! . . . Feu!"
It was an admirable volley, even Suleiman firing exactly on my word, "Feu," although he knew no word of French.
Three times I repeated the volley, and then gave the order for a rapid feu de joie as it were, at 1,500 metres, so that the advancing Touareg should hear at least six rifles, and suppose that there were probably many more.
I then ordered my men, in succession, to fire two shots as quickly as possible, each firing as soon as the man on his left had got his two shots off. This should create doubt and anxiety as to our numbers.
I then ordered rapid independent fire.
The Touareg had deployed wildly, dismounted, and opened fire. This rejoiced me, for I had conceived the quite unlikely possibility of their charging in one headlong overwhelming wave. . . .
It was time to go.
"Run to your camel, Maudie. Come on, Miss Vanbrugh," I shouted; and called to Dufour, "God watch over you, my dear friend."
I had to go to the American girl and drag her from the rock behind which she stood, firing steadily and methodically, changing her sights occasionally, a handful of empty cartridge-cases on the ground to her right, a handful of cartridges ready to her hand on the rock. . . .
I shall never forget that picture of Mary Vanbrugh--dressed as an Arab girl and fighting like a trained soldier. . . .
"I'm not coming!" she cried.
I shook her as hard as I could and then literally dragged her to her camel.
"Good-bye, my children," I cried as I abandoned them.
§ 2
We rode for the rest of that day, and I thanked God when I could no longer hear the sounds of rifle-fire, glad though I was that they had only died away as distance weakened them, and not with the suddenness that would have meant a charge, massacre and pursuit.
I was a bitter, miserable and savage man when at last I was compelled to draw rein, and Miss Vanbrugh bore my evil temper with a gentle womanly sweetness of which I had not thought her capable.
She dressed my arm again (and I almost hoped that it might never heal while she was near) and absolutely insisted that she and Maudie should share watches with me. When I refused this, she said:
"Very well, Major, then instead of one watching while two sleep, we'll both watch, and Maudie shall chaperone us--and that's the sort of thing Euclid calls reductio ad absurdum, or plumb-silly." And nothing would shake her, although I could have done so willingly.
What with the wound in my arm and the wound in my soul, I was near the end of my tether. . . .
We took a two-hour watch in turn, poor Maudie nursing a rifle of which she was mortally afraid.
Chapter XI.
The Cross of Duty
We rode hard all the next day, and the two girls, thanks to the hard training of the previous weeks, stood the strain well.
It was for the sake of the camels and not for that of the two brave women that I at length drew rein and halted for a four-hour rest at a water-hole.
As I strode up and down, in misery and grief at the thoughts that filled my mind--thoughts of those splendid men whom I had left to die, Mary Vanbrugh came from the little tente d'abri which I had insisted that she and Maudie should use.
"Go
