officers, who cursed, and shoved, and prayed in the vain attempt to hold
them. The captain and the subs. were elbowed and jostled, while the men
crowded towards Private Conolly for their orders. The confusion had not
spread, for the other companies, in the dust and smoke and turmoil, had
lost touch with their mutinous comrades. Captain Foley saw that even
now there might be time to avert a disaster. "Think what you are doing,
man," he yelled, rushing towards the ringleader. "There are a thousand
Irish in the square, and they are dead men if we break."

The words alone might have had little effect on the old moonlighter.
It is possible that, in his scheming brain, he had already planned how
he was to club his Irish together and lead them to the sea. But at that
moment the Arabs broke through the screen of camels which had fended
them off. There was a Struggle, a screaming, a mule rolled over, a
wounded man sprang up in a cacolet with a spear through him, and then
through the narrow gap surged a stream of naked savages, mad with
battle, drunk with slaughter, spotted and splashed with blood--blood
dripping from their spears, their arms, their faces. Their yells, their
bounds, their crouching, darting figures, the horrid energy of their
spear-thrusts, made them look like a blast of fiends from the pit. And
were these the Allies of Ireland? Were these the men who were to strike
for her against her enemies? Conolly's soul rose up in loathing at the
thought.

He was a man of firm purpose, and yet at the first sight of those
howling fiends that purpose faltered, and at the second it was blown to
the winds. He saw a huge coal-black negro seize a shrieking
camel-driver and saw at his throat with a knife. He saw a shock-headed
tribesman plunge his great spear through the back of their own little
bugler from Mill-street. He saw a dozen deeds of blood--the murder of