As for these, their doom was inevitable. Their enemies could shoot them down with ease at any moment, but refrained. It was clearly their intention to take them alive. "The last shot for ourselves, remember," said Haviland, in his voice the hard, set tone of a brave man who has done with hope. "Remember that brute's promise if we are captured. And he'll keep it too." "I've got three left, and here goes one," said Oakley, discharging his revolver at a prominent Arab. The latter spun round and fell. With a roar of rage, several of his comrades, unable to contain themselves, fired a volley, but with discrimination. The remainder of Somala's clansmen fell dead, leaving himself and the three white men alone. "My last shot!" exclaimed the doctor, calmly. "God forgive us if there's sin in what we do!" And placing the muzzle of his revolver against his heart, he pressed the trigger. His body, instantaneously lifeless, sank heavily, but in doing so fell against Haviland's legs. He, losing his balance, stumbled heavily against Oakley--upsetting him. A wild stagger, then a fall. Before they could rise, a dozen of their enemies had flung themselves upon them with lightning-like swiftness, pinning them to the earth. Somala, who had expended his last shot, not on himself, was laying about him vigorously with his ataghan. But, wounded in several places, weakened with loss of blood and exhaustion, he too was at last overpowered. The victory was complete. And the scene of it had now become one or indescribable horror--a very nightmare of blood, and hacked corpses in every conceivable attitude of agony and repulsion. And with it all came the convulsive shrieks and groans of a few of the miserable bearers, who had been taken alive, and whom the black contingent was amusing itself roasting to death in the open ground outside the tree belt. Within, the more civilised section of the slave-hunters was looting the stores and property of the expedition. They tore open bales, and battered in boxes and cases. But the authority of Mushad was absolute, and his commands speedily infused an element of method into the looting process. Helpless, swathed in coils of thongs wound round them from head to foot, to the accompaniment of many blows and kicks, the unhappy prisoners lay. "Behold, ye dogs!" jeered one of those who guarded them. "Behold! Is it not good to look upon the face of a friend once more? Behold!" He pointed to the head of the unfortunate doctor, which, ghastly and dripping, was being borne about on the point of a spear. Raising eyes dull with despair and horror, they saw it and envied him. He was at peace now, or, at worst, was in more merciful hands than those of these fiends; while they themselves--the horrible tortures which had been decreed for them by the slaver chief, and to which end alone they had been spared--why, the bare thought was enough to turn the brain.