"He say they all lay down lives for Sultan—love Sultan very much," Jaffa interpreted to me with impassive face. Off we went, and, my word, it was a most unpleasant place! The foot of the walls of the fort was piled with all kinds of rubbish—cast-off blood-stained clothes, bones, skeletons of dogs and camels, all the filth one could imagine—and the stench was horrid. Popple Opstein pointed out any number of bullet marks in the crumbling bricks of the forts, and we made grimaces as we realized what a very tough defence they must have been making, and how excessively uncomfortable they must be. Two solemn, weary-looking Arabs—one bandaged about the head—opened a little door in the big one, which had been closed again, and we passed into a large passage, which opened out into the court-yard in the centre of the fort. Stone benches on either side of this passage-way were thronged with more tired-looking soldiers, most of them asleep, and very many of them evidently wounded. In the court-yard itself the heat and the smell were awful. Thirty or forty lean horses were tethered in the open, a dozen camels knelt stolidly in the shade which a mat-screen gave them, whilst hundreds of goats and sheep wandered about feeding on whatever garbage lay about. As we passed across, and tried to avoid falling over sheep, being kicked by a horse, or bitten by a camel, a score or more battle-stained Arabs raised themselves wearily from the ground and leant on their rifles. "A beastly place to be cooped up in," Popple Opstein whispered, as we followed our guides through an archway into a delightfully-cool chamber or hall, and up some winding stone steps to the upper story. This was evidently where the officials and officers lived—much more handsomely decorated it was, with carvings, and lattice-work of stone, wood, and iron, elegant pillars and arches forming a delightfully-cool, creeper-covered balcony above the four sides of the crowded court-yard, from which, however, the smell and the noise of all the animals below were still too unpleasantly evident. Fifty or more soldiers were lying on this balcony in every attitude of weary sleep, and as we hurried along it after our silent guides we could catch a glimpse of the battlements on the flat roof above our heads, and a motionless sentry standing out vividly against the sky, watching to give the alarm did the tribesmen make another attack.