"We must have captured a couple of thousand rifles and thirty or forty thousand rounds of ammunition," my chum said exultingly. "It’s the finest haul, they tell me, that’s been made for years." I don’t mind saying that if he had told me that there was a steaming hot dish of bacon and eggs and a potful of coffee waiting for me round the corner I should have been much more excited—just at this time. *CHAPTER XI* *The Cobra Bracelet Again* Take the whole world over, and you would not have found a more happy group than we made that morning, sitting in the gap, yarning whenever our jaws were not busy crunching the ship’s biscuits the _Intrepids_ had brought us; Webster, Griffiths, Jaffa, and the two marines surrounded by a crowd of bluejackets eager to learn every detail of the adventure, and the Baron and myself squatting on a rock, he beaming at me like an old mother hen who had just found her long-lost chick, and watching me munch his biscuit as if it was the most pleasant sight in the world. "When darkness came on," he was saying, "We gave you up for ’finish’. We thought they’d rush you; we thought you’d have not the slightest chance of escape. You remember firing rifles—at the beginning—when it first got dark? We were waiting for them. We tried to help you with those shells of ours—it was the only thing we could do—but we made so certain that it was the beginning of the end for you that, when no more rifle flashes showed up, we thought you all were killed. We felt sick that we couldn’t climb up and kill a few Arabs to revenge you, so we kept plugging away with the nine-pounder in sheer desperate anger. Man! we never guessed for a moment what was really happening. Look down there at that litter of rifles; the path and the rocks for a hundred yards are simply smothered with them. It’s splendid! splendid, old chap!" In his excitement my chum leant forward and gripped my shoulder till I winced. "If you’d seen Jaffa standing there on his rock, and heard him calling out: ’Khalli bunduk ’ak. Ma kattle kum! Ist agel!’ you’d have thought him splendid. He’s the hero of the affair," I said, pointing to Jaffa, who was extricating himself from the crowd of his admirers and stalking solemnly away to perch himself on a rock, where no one could come and worry him with questions. "We shall never forget those words; we shouted them till we were hoarse. Didn’t we, Webster?" Webster smiled. "Pretty ticklish work—part of the time, sir!" "Those shells of yours just did the trick," I went on, telling him how Griffiths’s rifle going off accidentally had nearly brought about a catastrophe. "They were simply hideous in the darkness; the chasm looked a perfect hell, and the half-crazed wretches fled through the gap from them like a flock of sheep. How the dickens did you manage to train the gun and aim it? That’s what beat me."