Several more camels were hit and fell. Absolute panic had broken out among the unarmed men; many of those on the upper zigzags began creeping and crawling downwards, and I knew that when they met the Arabs coming up to attack us, the confusion on that awful path, and in that awful obscurity below, would be appalling. After this events began to follow each other very rapidly. The number of bullets whizzing round us was great, and proved that very many men must have been withdrawn already, back into the hollow; I felt certain that the noise of the Maxim gun seemed louder. If this meant anything it meant that the Arabs were gradually being forced back and that the line of bluejackets was advancing. Very shortly afterwards the character of the noise of rifle firing altered entirely. There was very little of that muffled rumbling which we had heard before; the noise was sharper and very much louder, and amongst it, quite distinct, I could hear the most distant sound of our own rifles, much like tin tacks being driven into wood with single blows of a big hammer. The bottom of the ravine, too, was lighted up with hundreds and hundreds of rifle flashes, and shells began bursting there again. This made it certain that the Arabs had actually fallen back into the bottom of the "coffee-cup", and I knew that they must be so bunched up together that the shrapnel bullets would soon compel them to scatter up the lower legs of that zigzag. Once there it would be difficult to reach them, but I did not bother about that. They would have to come up and attack us if they wanted to save a single camel. Jaffa quietly told me that they were already beginning to do this, and then, almost before he had spoken, I heard the faint sound of cheering, and knew that the _Intrepids_ were rushing the mouth of the ravine. Oh, what a grand, comforting sound that was! The nine-pounder had stopped firing; so had the Maxim. Probably the guns’ crews could not keep pace with the last rush of our fellows, or could not fire without hitting them. Then I saw spurts of rifle flame spitting out into the gorge, in the very opposite direction from which they had been spluttering before, and knew that they came from our own people. It was grand! It meant absolute victory and the capture of the entire caravan. I turned and grinned at Jaffa and Griffiths. "Bedouin come up very fast—plenty come," Jaffa said.