"We must watch those rascals," he remarked to his young comrades. "Sir Jehan told me that on the last occasion when they appeared before the walls they succeeded in blowing in the north gate by dumping a bag of powder against it. To make sure that the stuff would go up, one of those cheerful Baggaras calmly stood over it and lit it with a torch. It shows what desperate fellows we have to deal with." During the assault on the preceding night the Croixilians had not come off unharmed. Seven had fallen by spears flung by the stormers, while nearly twenty had been killed or wounded by dropping shots from the Arab sharpshooters; but up to the present the tide of battle was greatly in favour of the besieged. Nevertheless, Reeves did not feel particularly comfortable. His instinct told him that something was behind the unaccountable entrenching tactics of the enemy. Perhaps, also, they might, in the course of their excavations, come across the buried aqueduct. If that were the case, it would mean either a miserable death from thirst within the walls, or extermination in a desperate sortie from the doomed city. At sunrise the correspondent ascended the Mound of Pharamond, and, climbing to the top of the highest tower, gazed in the direction of the largest hostile camp. A confused babel of voices borne on the faint breeze told him that the Moslems were performing their morning devotions. As he waited and watched, a hush seemed to fall upon the invading host. Suddenly a white cloud of smoke burst from a sandhill, and a shell, shrieking well over the walls, exploded in one of the houses adjoining the marketplace. Reeves ground his teeth. The Arabs were using a modern rifled gun! The situation was indeed serious. CHAPTER XIV The Dash for the Gun ON returning to the walls the correspondent found that Hugh and Gerald, alarmed by the detonation, had risen hastily from their beds, and were awaiting him at their post. Sir Jehan, with several of his knights, was also present, while the streets were filled with panic-stricken women and children. "What is amiss, sir?" exclaimed Croixilia's ruler breathlessly. "The Arabs are paying us back in our own coin, I'm afraid," replied Reeves. "They've brought up a fieldpiece, from goodness only knows where!" As he spoke there was another dull report, and a second shell whizzed over the walls, bursting in the centre of the marketplace. "That was considerably lower than the first shot," observed Reeves. "They are trying the range. It will be a bad job hen they begin to pound the walls; a few I I A houses won't matter so much, if the people clear out of them in time. The worst of it is, we are outranged and cannot reply." "What are they firing with?" asked Hugh. "I can't say for certain, until one of the shells fails to explode; then I may find a clue. But I should not be surprised if it were a Krupp gun." "A Krupp!" exclaimed Hugh. "How could they get hold of a gun of that sort?"