Miles was the first to be tested in this way. On reaching a piece of broken ground his foot caught in something and he stumbled forward. His hands being bound behind him he could not protect his head, and the result was that he plunged into a prickly shrub, out of which he arose with flushed and bleeding countenance. This was bad enough, but when the fiery Arab brought a lance down heavily on his shoulders his temper gave way, and he rushed at the man in a towering rage, striving at the same time, with intense violence, to burst his bonds. Of course he failed, and was rewarded by a blow on the head, which for a moment or two stunned him. Seeing this, Armstrong's power of restraint gave way, and he sprang to the rescue of his friend, but only to meet the same fate at the hands of the fiery Arab. Stunned and bleeding, though not subdued, they were compelled to move on again at the head of the party--spurred on now and then by a touch from the point of the fiery man's lance. Indeed it seemed as if this man's passionate nature would induce him ere long to risk his chief's wrath by disobeying orders and stabbing the prisoners! Stevenson, the marine, was the next to suffer, for his foot slipped on a stone, and he fell with such violence as to be unable to rise for a few minutes. Impatient of the delay, the fiery man struck him so savagely with the spear-shaft that even his own comrades remonstrated. "If I could only burst this cord!" growled Simkin between his teeth, "I'd--" He stopped, for he felt that it was unmanly, as well as idle, to boast in the circumstances. "We must have patience, comrade," said Stevenson, as he rose pale and bloodstained from the ground. "Our Great Captain sometimes gives us the order to submit and suffer and--" A prick in the fleshy part of his thigh caused him to stop abruptly. At this point the endurance of Jack Molloy failed him, and he also "went in" for violent action! But Jack was a genius as well as a sailor, and profited by the failures of his comrades. Instead of making futile efforts to break his bonds like them, he lowered his hairy head, and, with a howl and a tremendous rush, like a fish-torpedo, launched himself, or, as it were, took "a header," into the fiery man! "No fellow," as Jack himself afterwards remarked, "could receive fifteen stone ten into his bread-basket and go on smiling!" On the contrary, he went down like a nine-pin, and remained where he fell, for his comrades--who evidently did not love him--merely laughed and went on their way, leaving him to revive at his leisure. The prisoners advanced somewhat more cheerfully after this event, for, besides being freed from pricks of the spear-point, there was that feeling of elation which usually arises in every well-balanced mind from the sight of demerit meeting with its appropriate reward.