camel-guns posted at one corner of the square opened the ball as the
square moved forward by its right to get possession of a knoll of rising
ground. All had fought in this manner many times before, and there was
no novelty in the entertainment; always the same hot and stifling
formation, the smell of dust and leather, the same boltlike rush of the
enemy, the same pressure on the weakest side, the few minutes of
hand-to-hand scuffle, and then the silence of the desert, broken only by
the yells of those whom their handful of cavalry attempted to purse. They
had become careless. The camel-guns spoke at intervals, and the square
slouched forward amid the protesting of the camels. Then came the
attack of three thousand men who had not learned from books that it is
impossible for troops in close order to attack against breech-loading fire.

A few dropping shots heralded their approach, and a few horsemen led,
but the bulk of the force was naked humanity, mad with rage, and armed
with the spear and the sword. The instinct of the desert, where there is
always much war, told them that the right flank of the square was the
weakest, for they swung clear of the front. The camel-guns shelled them
as they passed and opened for an instant lanes through their midst, most
like those quick-closing vistas in a Kentish hop-garden seen when the
train races by at full speed; and the infantry fire, held till the opportune
moment, dropped them in close-packing hundreds. No civilised troops in
the world could have endured the hell through which they came, the
living leaping high to avoid the dying who clutched at their heels, the
wounded cursing and staggering forward, till they fell--a torrent black as
the sliding water above a mill-dam--full on the right flank of the square.

Then the line of the dusty troops and the faint blue desert sky overhead
went out in rolling smoke, and the little stones on the heated ground ant
the tinder-dry clumps of scrub became matters of surpassing interest, for