a run, straight toward the dark, sinister mouth of the pass. Their officers shouted at them unheeded, unheeded beat them with their fists, menaced them with a drawn revolver here and there. They went forward steadily into the menacing darkness. Far up the pass sounded a shot, a rocket streaked up, burst into a blossom of flame, illuminating for an instant the dun, drab walls of the Abu Hajar. Then came the steady prattle of a machine gun.
"Damn your eyes, then!" a boyish voice sounded above the clatter of feet, as a subaltern cursed his men with fearsome blasphemies. "Come along, and see if you're as willing to carry on as you were to start."
They answered according to their nature. The English and the Scots fixed bayonets as they ran; the Irish clubbed their rifles; the little Gurkhas threw theirs clattering on the rocks, drawing the curved, wicked kukris dangling against their buttocks.
The Turks, too, had seen the message flashed on the clouds. Not able to read it, they had taken it as a signal to advance; and, reënforced by the rapidly arriving companies, started down the pass to meet the British.
Jamned in the narrow gut, they met breast-on in the dark; and, pressed forward by the eager men behind, were crushed so closely together,
