"
It may have been chance, or it may have been skill, but the third and
fourth shells burst over the square. Sheik Kadra smiled grimly and
galloped back to the left, where his spearmen were streaming down into
the gully. As he joined them a deep growling rose from the plain
beneath, like the snarling of a sullen wild beast, and a little knot of
tribesmen fell into a struggling heap, caught in the blast of lead from
a Gardner. Their comrades pressed on over them, and sprang down into
the ravine. From all along the crest burst the hard, sharp crackle of
Remington fire.
The square had slowly advanced, rippling over the low sandhills, and
halting every few minutes to re-arrange its formation. Now, having made
sure that there was no force of the enemy in the scrub, it changed its
direction, and began to take a line parallel to the Arab position.
It was too steep to assail from the front, and if they moved far enough
to the right the general hoped that he might turn it. On the top of
those ruddy hills lay a baronetcy for him, and a few extra hundreds in
his pension, and he meant having them both that day. The Remington fire
was annoying, and so were those two Krupp guns; already there were more
cacolets full than he cared to see. But on the whole he thought it
better to hold his fire until he had more to aim at than a few hundred
of fuzzy heads peeping over a razor-back ridge.
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