No More Learning

"They look like the Mahdi's men," said Torpenhow, elbowing himself
into the crush of the square; "but what thousands of 'em there are! The
tribes hereabout aren't against us, I know. "

"Then the Mahdi's taken another town," said Dick, "and set all these
yelping devils free to show us up. Lend us your glass. "

"Our scouts should have told us of this. We've been trapped," said a
subaltern. "Aren't the camel guns ever going to begin? Hurry up, you
men! "

There was no need of any order. The men flung themselves panting against
the sides of the square, for they had good reason to know that whoso
was left outside when the fighting began would very probably die in
an extremely unpleasant fashion. The little hundred-and-fifty-pound
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
and the tinder-dry clumps of scrub became matters of surpassing
interest, for men measured their agonised retreat and recovery by these
things, counting mechanically and hewing their way back to chosen pebble
and branch. There was no semblance of any concerted fighting. For aught
the men knew, the enemy might be attempting all four sides of the square
at once. Their business was to destroy what lay in front of them, to
bayonet in the back those who passed over them, and, dying, to drag
down the slayer till he could be knocked on the head by some avenging
gun-butt.

Dick waited with Torpenhow and a young doctor till the stress grew
unendurable. It was hopeless to attend to the wounded till the attack
was repulsed, so the three moved forward gingerly towards the weakest
side of the square. There was a rush from without, the short hough-hough
of the stabbing spears, and a man on a horse, followed by thirty or
forty others, dashed through, yelling and hacking. The right flank of
the square sucked in after them, and the other sides sent help. The
wounded, who knew that they had but a few hours more to live, caught at
the enemy's feet and brought them down, or, staggering into a discarded
rifle, fired blindly into the scuffle that raged in the centre of the
square.

Dick was conscious that somebody had cut him violently across his
helmet, that he had fired his revolver into a black, foam-flecked face
which forthwith ceased to bear any resemblance to a face, and that
Torpenhow had gone down under an Arab whom he had tried to "collar low,"
and was turning over and over with his captive, feeling for the man's
eyes. The doctor jabbed at a venture with a bayonet, and a helmetless
soldier fired over Dick's shoulder: the flying grains of powder stung
his cheek. It was to Torpenhow that Dick turned by instinct.