But the Emir's bodyguard worked well, keeping their charge together, hurrying on the camels, encouraging the women, and twice over forming up and attacking bands of their fellow fighting men who approached menacingly, seeing in the flying party of the Emir's household ample opportunities for securing plunder, but only to be beaten off. Any attempt at escape would only have been to invite recapture. Frank and his brother, well mounted as they were, like the guard, on a couple of the Emir's magnificent Arabs, could have galloped off with ease, but the slower going camels on which their friends rode could not have kept up with them, and even if an attempt had been made where were they to go? It was to run the gauntlet amongst the relics of the flying army, to risk being cut down by their friends before they had time to explain that they were not what they seemed. Harry seemed to have forgotten his injured arm, and he and Frank rode together, helping the officer of the guard, though it was only in keeping their own party together, and encouraging the followers of the Sheikh, who were losing their calmness in the wild rout, with the guns of the horse artillery sending forth grape wherever a knot of the enemy hung together, and the cavalry, white and black, charging here and there. It was while Frank was cheering on Sam, and then helping a dismounted man to a seat on a baggage camel, that the officer rode up, meeting Harry, who turned to him at once, to address him in the keen, commanding tones of the British officer, as he pointed towards the open plains and hills. "You can never get to Khartoum," he said. "Make for the desert." "Yes," said the officer calmly, as he fully grasped the position; for rapidly passing their left flank, and gradually cutting off their way, they saw a regiment of the Egyptian cavalry tearing along, riding down scores of the dervishes as they went. It seemed to be their only chance, and the two young men joined with their leader in heart and soul to hurry the camel train along. Turning then at right-angles, the leading man made for the shelter of some hills a couple of miles to the west, and as the camels were hurried along, there seemed for a few minutes a prospect of getting right away. "From Scylla into Charybdis," cried Harry bitterly. "But can we do better?" said Frank excitedly. "There is no better," said Harry sadly, "in a rout. It is every man for himself now. No one has a friend." They rode on as fast as they could get the groaning and complaining camels along, and were rapidly nearing the hills, when a warning cry came from their leader, in answer to which the guard turned back, leaving the camels to proceed alone, for the Emir's officer had suddenly become aware of the fact that a band of at least a hundred of the mounted dervishes in full retreat had swooped round, and were dashing at them, certainly with no peaceful intent.