There were about a couple of hundred sheltered by the ruin and the old boiler; and for some distance round about the ground was regularly honey-combed with rifle-pits, each of which contained an Arab, crouching down, spear in hand, only desiring to kill an enemy and die. It was said before that they swarmed out of the fort earlier in the day like bees when their hive is tapped. Like bees, too, when angered, they only sought to sting, though they knew that the act of stinging was their own destruction. As a soldier came to the edge of an apparently empty hole in the ground, a man would spring out upon him and transfix him before he had time to offer resistance. Not that this succeeded often. The men soon learned to approach these rifle-pits with their muzzles lowered, finger on trigger, the point of the bayonet over the opening before they came up to it. Then, if the Arab made his spring, he was transfixed; if he kept crouching, waiting for the other to pass, he was shot. A large number of the holes became the graves they looked like before the boiler was reached. Here the massacre was horrible, for at that point the state of things was reversed, and the Soudanese were few in number, while the English were the many. And it was a revolting thing to have to shoot down and stab this handful of heroes. But it could not be helped; they would not fly, and they would not surrender; and to endeavour to spare one of them was to insure your own death or that of a friend. It was even necessary to slay the slain, for they would sham and lie still, to spring up when the English had passed and stab one in the back; then stand with extended arms to be shot, with a smile of triumph and joy, secure of Paradise since he had sent a double-dyed infidel, a disbeliever, both in Mahomet and the Mahdi, to his doom. The old sugar-mill and the ground about it being at length cleared, the victorious square advanced upon the wells. The whole body of Arabs were now in retreat, dismayed at last by the terrible slaughter amongst their best and bravest; for the reckless heroism which is described, though there were so many hundreds of examples of it, as to entitle it to be fairly considered as characteristic of the race, could not, of course, be universal, or they would be absolutely invincible, except by extermination. They were brave, every man and boy of them, but the vast majority were not mad fanatics; and, indeed, a certain number of the tribes engaged did not believe in the Mahdi at all, but joined him partly because he was the strongest, and partly because they hated the Turks--and to them Turks and Egyptians were all one--and their oppressive corrupt government, and the Mahdi had thrown it off.