Baggaras, were crouching. Tat, tat, tat, went the rifles of three
mounted infantrymen in front of the left shoulder of the square, and an
instant later they wore spurring it for their lives, crouching over the
manes of their horses, and pelting over the sandhills with thirty or
forty galloping chieftains at their heels. Rocks and scrub and mimosa
swarmed suddenly into life. Rushing black figures came and went in the
gaps of the bushes. A howl that drowned the shouts of the officers, a
long quavering yell, burst from the ambuscade. Two rolling volleys from
the Royal Wessex, one crash from the screw-gun firing shrapnel, and then
before a second cartridge could be rammed in, a living, glistening black
wave, tipped with steel, had rolled over the gun, the Royal Wessex had
been dashed back among the camels, and 1,000 fanatics were hewing and
hacking in the heart of what had been the square.

The camels and mules in the centre, jammed more and more together as
their leaders flinched from the rush of the tribesmen, shut out the view
of the other three faces, who could only tell that the Arabs had got in
by the yells upon Allah, which rose ever nearer and nearer amid the
clouds of sand-dust, the struggling animals, and the dense mass of
swaying, cursing men. Some of the Wessex fired back at the Arabs who
had passed them, as excited Tommies will, and it is whispered among
doctors that it was not always a Remington bullet which was cut from a
wound that day. Some rallied in little knots, stabbing furiously with
their bayonets at the rushing spearmen. Others turned at bay with their
backs against the camels, and others round the general and his staff,
who, revolver in hand, had flung themselves into the heart of it.
But the whole square was sidling slowly away from the gorge, pushed back
by the pressure at the shattered corner.

The officers and men at the other faces were glancing nervously to the