He knew--irrevocably--what she meant. She was determined at least to spare him a recurrence of the tragedy which had ruined so many of what should have been the best years of his life; and although he knew he could have faced even that risk courageously in her service, none the less did he rejoice that he was not called upon to do this thing a second time.
"Then--if the worst should happen--if we are not relieved in time----"
"We can all die--together," she said very simply; and in her face he read something which, told him that for all her youth this girl would know how to die.
But further speech was suddenly cut short The Bedouins, who had been hanging back for a moment's parley, had evidently rallied their forces for another effort; for with a yell destined to strike terror into the hearts of their foes they literally swarmed up the ladder until the whole window-space was filled with a horrid nightmare of bearded, swarthy faces, of sinewy, grasping hands, of tossing spears and flourished fire-arms.
Suddenly, with an exclamation of pain, Hassan dropped his revolver and clapped his hand to his side; and Anstice felt, with a wild thrill of dismay in all his veins, that the fight was practically over for them now. The odds were too great--one well-directed bullet and he too would be disabled, powerless to protect the girl for whose sake he longed so ardently to win the day.
"My God, Iris, we're beaten!" Even as he spoke he was firing into the midst of the mass of packed faces at the window; and he heard her words, spoken in a passionate whisper as one hears strange, whispered sentences in a dream: "No--no!" Iris had been listening to another sound--the sound of hope, of renewed life--and now, in the moment of his discouragement, she whispered the glorious truth. "Listen--they're here--the men have come in time--oh, don't you hear them shouting to us to hold on--for a minute----"
The next moment a wild cry from Hassan rent the air; and as the crowd of fierce faces seemed, suddenly, to recede as a wave washes backwards on the shore, Anstice knew, with a great uplifting of his spirit, that help had indeed come--miraculously--in time to save the day....
* * * * *
Answering shouts from the desert, the drumming of horses' hoofs, the clamour of voices upraised in cries of encouragement--these were the sounds which Anstice, almost unbelieving, heard at last; and as the desert men began to retreat, tumbling over themselves and each other in their haste to flee before this new enemy was upon them, Anstice turned to Iris with a laugh of purest happiness.