Sherroom Bounded Forward Like An Antelope,
At A Pace That Kept Our Horses At A Hand Gallop.
In a couple of minutes
we saw a large circular stockade in a clear space, but within fifty
yards of the forest on our left.
We galloped up, followed closely by the
"Forty Thieves," who ran like hounds. I immediately surrounded the
stockade, from which the natives had commenced to shoot their arrows.
The Egyptian troops were close up, and in the uncertain light it was
impossible to see the arrows in their flight; thus one soldier was
immediately wounded; another received a shot through his trousers. An
arrow stuck in Mr. Higginbotham's saddle, and they began to fly about
very viciously. The "Forty Thieves" now opened fire, while the Egyptians
were drawn up in a line about fifty yards from the stockade. It was
rather awkward, as the defence was a circle: thus as the troops fired
into a common centre, the bullets that passed through the intervening
spaces between the uprights of hard wood came pinging about our ears.
The sky had become grey, and there was sufficient light to discover the
doorway of the stockade. I ordered the bugles to sound "cease firing,"
and prepared to force the entrance. This was a narrow archway about four
feet six inches high, constructed of large pieces of hard wood that it
was impossible to destroy. The doorway was stopped by transverse bars of
abdnoos, or Bari ebony, and protected by a mass of hooked thorn that had
been dragged into the passage and jammed beneath the cross-bars.
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