Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/109

 late sandhills, without guide or notion as to their whereabouts.

Bright stars leaped suddenly from the vault of heaven, casting a pale bluish illumination upon the desert; a cold wind sprang from nowhere and chilled the foreigners to the bone.

One volley was fired, almost unanimously, upon the heels of the Spahi's wonderful shot. Had it been as effective as it seemed to be, things would have been well indeed with the little party; for when the vapor had cleared the dunes were bare and lifeless again—the Tawareks had disappeared.

"Forward!" shouted O'Rourke. "To the boats!"

Upon the word, the command began to move toward the seashore and the Eirene—or as nearly in that direction as it might guess". The square formation was preserved, as was the silence, the men alertly awaiting the expected attack and with keen eyes' searching the dunes for sign or sound of the enemy.

None appeared, save now and then the red tongue of flame from the top of a sandhill and the dull report of a rifle; for the most part the shots were poorly aimed, flying high above the heads of the foreigners. Nevertheless, they were irritating, galling to the ready fighters who asked nothing better than a chance to stand up and shoot and be shot at by an enemy who dared fight in the open.

"Aim at the flashes!" O'Rourke told them, and this advice they followed, but with what result they knew not.

For the Tawareks did not cry aloud their hurts, sustained they any; they fought with deadly purpose and in utter silence, these men born to and bred in the eternal silence of the desert. And continually they maintained a fire that seemed to come from every point of the compass, and minute by minute grew more acute and galling.