"Stick close to me, Devereaux," cried Waller, shortening his reins and raising himself in his stirrups. He escaped two juzail balls, and parried a most vicious poke of a lance made at him by Shireen Khan; and then by one tremendous blow, which, however, fell harmlessly on the thick folds of the loonghee or scarlet cap of that personage, he tumbled him from his perch on the camel's hump. The next blow he gave rid Denzil of Abdallah, the Arab Hadji, who, shouting "Mohammed resoul Allah!" had actually sprung, with all the fierce activity of a tree-tiger, upon his horse's crupper, and was about to plunge an Afghan dagger--a formidable weapon, as it is twenty-four inches in length, broader than a sword-blade, and sharp as a razor--into his back or throat; it only grazed his neck, however, when Waller's sword, with all the impetus that strength of arm and speed of horse could give it, was through and through the body of the savage fanatic. "There is another nigger sent to the other end of nowhere," cried Waller. "Dash right through them, gentlemen; we must cut for our lives!" Riding close together and abreast, the five officers, making a charge right through the mob (who were chiefly Ghilzees, and who, in their blind fury, wrath, and confusion, wounded and shot each other), succeeded by hard riding in reaching the cantonments, the gates of which were instantly closed and barricaded. Polwhele left his sword in one man's body, so firmly was it wedged in the spinal column. Waller's sword was only one of the rubbishy regulation blades of Sheffield, a poor weapon when opposed to the keenly tempered sabres of those Afghan warriors, yet towering over them all, his bulk, strength, and stature had availed him greatly; he had shot two, and cut down three. Denzil, though half stunned by confusion at the suddenness of the whole affair, and by the explosion of a matchlock close to his face, struck about manfully, and must have sent at least one Mussulman on his way to the dark-eyed girls of paradise; for when he dismounted, breathless and excited, within the gates, he found his sword and right hand both covered with blood. In the exasperation of his mind at Rose Trecarrel, the tumult of the time was a relief to Denzil's mind; and he was not sorry that she, through her lorgnette, had seen him, sword in hand, among the Afghans.