Forza is built of great, rough stones, with ends projecting in places cyclopean-wise, which to an active man might give a foothold.  The little garrison was at its posts, and picked the men off with carbines and revolvers, and in emergencies gave a brown chest the straight bayonet-thrust home.  The tribesmen fought like fiends, scrambling up silently with long knives between their teeth, till a shot found them and they rolled back to die on the sand at the foot.  Now and again a man would reach the parapet and spring down into the courtyard.  Then it was the turn of Andover and Lewis to account for him, and they did not miss.  One man with matted hair and beard was at Lewis’s back before he saw him.  A crooked knife had nearly found that young man’s neck, but a lucky twisting aside saved him.  He dodged his adversary up and down the yard till he got his pistol from his inner pocket.  Then it was his turn to face about.  The man never stopped and a ball took him between the eyes.  He dropped dead as a stone, and his knife flying from his hand skidded along the sand till it stopped with a clatter on the stones.  The sound in the hot sulphurous air grated horribly, and Lewis clapped his hands to his ears to find that he too had not come off scathless.  The knife had cut the lobe, and, bleeding like a pig, he went in search of water.

The assailants seemed prepared to find paradise speedily, for they were not sparing with their lives.  The attacking party was small, and apparently there was no reserve, for in all the wide landscape there was no sign of man.  Then for no earthly reason the assault was at an end.  One by one the men dropped back and disappeared from the plateau.  There was no overt signal, no sound; but in a little the annoyed garrison were looking at vacancy and one another.

“This is the devil’s own business,” said Andover, rubbing his eyes.  The men, too astonished to pick off stragglers, allowed the enemy to melt into space; then they set themselves down with rifles cuddled up to their chins, and stared at Andover.

“It beats me,” said that disturbed man.  “How many killed?”

“Seven,” said a sergeant.  “About five more wounded.  None of us touched, barring a bullet in my boot, and two Johnnies slashed on the cheek.  Seems to me as if the gen’lman, Mr.  ’Aystoun, was ’it, though.”

At the word Andover ran for his quarters, where he found his servant dressing Lewis’s wounded ear.  That young man with a face of great despair was inclining his head over a basin.

“What’s the matter, Andy?  Don’t tell me the show has stopped.  I thought they were game to go on for hours, and I was just coming to join you.”

“They’ve gone, every mother’s son of them.  I told you it was comic opera all along.  Seven of them have found the part too much for them, but the rest have cleared out like smoke.  I give it up.”