“Save yourself!  I’ll hold these devils.  Run, you infernal fool, run!”

Oliver hesitated, although the Mountaineer was pulling at him, till the heads of more Fung appeared.  Then, with a gesture of despair, he turned and fled.  First ran Oliver, then Japhet, whom he had outpaced, and after them came a number of priests or guards, waving knives, while in the background Higgs rolled on the rock with his captors.

The rest was very short.  Orme slid down the rump of the idol on to the tail, followed by the Mountaineer, and after them in single file came three Fung, who apparently thought no more of the perilous nature of their foothold than do the sheiks of the Egyptian pyramids when they swarm about those monuments like lizards.  Nor, for the matter of that, did Oliver or Japhet, who doubled down the tail as though it were a race track.  Oliver swung himself on to the ladder, and in a second was half across it, we holding its other end, when suddenly he heard his companion cry out.  A Fung had got hold of Japhet by the leg and he lay face downward on the board.

Oliver halted and slowly turned round, drawing his revolver as he did so.  Then he aimed and fired, and the Fung, leaving go of Japhet’s leg, threw up his arms and plunged headlong into the gulf beneath.  The next thing I remember is that they were both among us, and somebody shouted, “Pull in the ladder.”

“No,” said Quick, “wait a bit.”

Vaguely I wondered why, till I perceived that three of those courageous Fung were following across it, resting their hands upon each other’s shoulders, while their companions cheered them.

“Now, pull, brothers, pull!” shouted the Sergeant, and pull we did.  Poor Fung! they deserved a better fate.

“Always inflict loss upon the enemy when you get a chance,” remarked the Sergeant, as he opened fire with his repeating rifle upon other Fung who by now were clustering upon the back of the idol.  This position, however, they soon abandoned as untenable, except one or two of them who remained there, dead or wounded.

A silence followed, in the midst of which I heard Quick saying to Joshua in his very worst Arabic: 

“Now does your Royal Highness think that we Gentiles are cowards, although it is true those Fung are as good men as we any day?”

Joshua declined argument, and I turned to watch Oliver, who had covered his face with his hands, and seemed to be weeping.

“What is it, O friend, what is it?” I heard Maqueda say in her gentle voice—­a voice full of tears, tears of gratitude I think.  “You have done a great deed; you have returned safe; all is well.”

“Nay,” he answered, forgetting her titles in his distress, “all is ill.  I have failed, and to-night they throw my brother to the lions.  He told me so.”

Maqueda, finding no answer, stretched out her hand to the Mountaineer, his companion in adventure, who kissed it.