In 1910 British prestige had shed its last rag in Somaliland: we had withdrawn to the coast and the Mullah's horsemen actually rode through Berbera bazar on one of their raids and withdrew unscathed. In 1912 it was found necessary to form a company of Somali police on camels to keep the peace between "friendlies" who, to allay a certain amount of indignation at home, had been armed with rifles to protect themselves against the Mullah's people, but were using these weapons, in their light-hearted way, to argue questions of grazing as they arose. Early in 1913 "a small dervish outpost" was reported to be preventing our friendlies from grazing in the Ain valley south of Burao at a time when no other pasturage was locally available, and the Somali camel-corps, about a hundred strong with three white officers, was sent to occupy Burao as its base and from there to afford moral and material support enabling the friendlies to graze unmolested in the threatened area. This cheery opportunism was the Government's wobbling attempt at equilibrium between the barefaced desertion of our protected tribes and its avowed policy of non-intervention unless on the cheap. It was done too much on the cheap; that little force was attacked by an overwhelming force of dervishes while out on the grazing grounds affording moral and material support. The Maxim was put out of action by an unlucky bullet, and the friendlies skedaddled with their Government rifles at the first shot, but returned later to loot the dead. The half-trained Somali camelry suffered severely and were most unsteady, but the two white officers surviving managed to extricate the remnant with difficulty, the gallant commandant having died for his trust early in the fight. He was blamed posthumously for having exceeded his orders; whether he ought to have exercised his moral and material support at a safe distance from the place where it was needed or have led his command in headlong flight was not made clear, and they were the only two military alternatives to the action he _did_ take. At all events the incident shamed the Government into taking more adequate measures to protect its friendlies in spite of bitter Nationalist opposition.