‘They’re outflanking them!’ I cried when I saw two men of the pursuing troop work their way from stone to stone farther and farther up each side of the ravine without seeming to attract the attention of the fugitives.

‘They could get them now!’ I cried, wild with excitement, as the wings exposed themselves on a bare burnt patch. ‘Oh, the fools! fools! One man on each hill-top will pick them off like sheep!’

I swung round to find Terry regarding me strangely.

‘I can’t bear to see the weaker side destroy itself,’ I muttered.

‘They’re lost,’ she said suddenly. ‘They’re lost.’

The wings of the large band opened a careful fire at the men beneath them. Two fellows rose convulsively from behind their boulders to fall in a heap.

‘It’s more than I can endure!’ Terry cried. ‘Can’t we go—out of sight—of this horror!’

‘We daren’t move,’ I returned in a low voice. ‘If we lie quiet they’ll pass us by—it’s our only chance of escape—’

Meanwhile two men who lay side by side in the centre of the pursuit were dragging themselves forward, and as they advanced they carried with them something whose nature I could not distinguish. I began to take the glass from its case to discover what it was they brought so carefully and with such deadly slow intent. They halted and seemed to work busily upon this thing. Then one of them raised his head and the stuttering of a Lewis gun broke out, muted and softened by distance but terrifying still. I slipped the glass into its case again; I had no need to spy now that the noise told me what I had seen them carry. In the uproar of the Lewis gun the crackle of the rifles was drowned, and the interval between each burst seemed a dead silence. Its gunners had found a comfortable stance; they lay steady, sweeping their enemies’ line. I could trace the course of their fire by the flashes that streamed from the gun-muzzle, now to one hill-slope, now to the other. The defenders broke in panic. They ran for their lives, flinging their rifles away, forgetting everything but fear of the machine-gun.

One of the men with the Lewis gun now sprang to his feet. His clear voice called his band to pursue, his arms waved them on. His companion, still lying prone, loosed his weapon on the fugitives. It coughed and barked and thunderous echoes rolled from hill to hill.