Anerley heard it all, though he did not feel energy enough to answer.  Then, as he watched two sleek, brown ponies with their yellow-clad riders dwindling among the rocks, his memory cleared suddenly, and he realised that the first great journalistic chance of his life was slipping away from him.  It was a small fight, but it was the first of the war, and the great public at home were all athirst for news.  They would have it in the Courier; they would have it in the Intelligence, and not a word in the Gazette.  The thought brought him to his feet, though he had to throw his arm round the stem of the palm tree to steady his swimming head.  There was a big black man lying where he had fallen, his huge chest pocked with bullet-marks, every wound rosetted with its circle of flies.  The Arab was stretched out within a few yards of him, with two hands clasped over the dreadful thing which had been his head.  Across him was lying Anerley’s fowling-piece, one barrel discharged, the other at half cock.

“Scott effendi shoot him your gun,” said a voice.  It was Abbas, his English-speaking body-servant.

Anerley groaned at the disgrace of it.  He had lost his head so completely that he had forgotten to cock his gun; and yet he knew that it was not fear but interest which had so absorbed him.  He put his hand up to his head and felt that a wet handkerchief was bound round his forehead.

“Where are the two other dervishes?”

“They ran away.  One got shot in arm.”

“What’s happened to me?”

“Effendi got cut on head.  Effendi catch bad man by arms, and Scott effendi shot him.  Face burn very bad.”

Anerley became conscious suddenly that there was a pringling about his skin and an overpowering smell of burned hair under his nostrils.  He put his hand to his moustache.  It was gone.  His eyebrows too?  He could not find them.  His head, no doubt, was very near to the dervish’s when they were rolling upon the ground together, and this was the effect of the explosion of his own gun.  Well, he would have time to grow some more hair before he saw Fleet Street again.  But the cut, perhaps, was a more serious matter.  Was it enough to prevent him getting to the telegraph-office at Sarras?  The only way was to try and see.  But there was only that poor little Syrian grey of his.  There it stood in the evening sunshine, with a sunk head and a bent knee, as if its morning’s work was still heavy upon it.  What hope was there of being able to do thirty-five miles of heavy going upon that?  It would be a strain upon the splendid ponies of his companions—­and they were the swiftest and most enduring in the country.  The most enduring?  There was one creature more enduring, and that was a real trotting camel.  If he had had one he might have got to the wires first after all, for Mortimer had said that over thirty miles they have the better of any horse.  Yes, if he had only had a real trotting camel!  And then like a flash came Mortimer’s words, “It is the kind of beast that the dervishes ride when they make their lightning raids.”