Terence O'Rourke, Gentleman Adventurer
foreigners were doomed; O'Rourke dared not draw off a single man from a single picket to help repel the Tawareks. And had he been able to do so, as he justly considered, what were thirty men against three hundred or more? They would be mowed down like grain before a scythe, were they not crushed by sheer superior force of numbers.
Indeed, he recognized the situation as sufficiently desperate to call for heroic measures; what such measures were to be he could not determine.
He ordered Mahmud, peremptorily, to pick out the tallest palm tree in the grove, and to climb it to the top, whence he would be able to command a wide view of the surrounding desert; the better to survey which O'Rourke told the man to fetch the fieldglasses from his tent.
Mahmud complied with all haste; while he was away, O'Rourke again made the rounds of the pickets, finding two dead.
And the fire of the Tawareks was being kept up with fiendish persistency. Once or twice he fancied that they were steadily drawing closer in upon the oasis, undaunted by the equally persistent and probably more effective rifle practice of his own men.
By now, the brain of the Irishman was clearing; some store of reserve force within the man had been tapped; an unsuspected supply of nervous energy was urging him on. He stood erect, without tremor; he thought quickly and to the point, finding no difficulty in commanding his mental powers; he spoke steadily and sharply, issuing his orders with his accustomed élan.
Small wonder, then, that Mahmud reverenced and feared him as a war deity—whether celestially or infernally inspired. Small wonder that the men sprang with alacrity to
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