As a result, the narrow circle within which we had been hemmed in by the enemy, had now been widened to one of about 1200 meters' distance from us. The firing had stopped altogether. I now assembled my men close by the caravan. The machine guns remained in position, in readiness to keep off the enemy, as well as to attack them. In spite of the close range at which the shots had poured in upon us, we had, thank God, only one man wounded among the Germans of my company. A little surprise was in store for me, however, when I looked about me for my friends of the Arab escort. There is a German saying which runs, "He counts his dear ones that are present, to find his six increased to seven." In my case the situation was reversed. Instead of twenty-four gendarmes, we now had only seven. There were no dead. The missing were found when we reached Djidda. Nearly all of the Arabs we still had with us had been shot in the leg. This was to be accounted for by the circumstance that, instead of advancing toward the enemy, they had run to cover among the camels. My men, who had lain in the sand some thirty to forty meters distant from the camels, had escaped the enemy's fire, which had passed over them. Our foes had aimed at the camels, and so, before our Arabs could pull the animals to their knees, to find complete shelter behind them, the enemy's bullets, in passing between the legs of the camels, had found a mark in the limbs of the heroes who had sought refuge there. Of the enemy's losses we knew nothing at all. But, as we stormed past the evacuated positions where they had lain, we counted fifteen dead. It is the custom with Bedouins immediately to remove all weapons from the bodies of their fallen comrades. As such had been the case with all but one of the dead, only one of their rifles fell into our hands. It was a breech loader of the most modern English construction, and was gratefully added to our own equipment. All the distant sand hills were still full of Bedouins, as we could see. In so far as possible, each one of those who showed themselves within range of our rifle fire, received his share of it, the moral effect produced being the principal object in view for the time being. We could not very well remain lying in the place where we were. I had at first thought that we were dealing with a band of brigands, whose purpose was the usual one, to capture the valuables we had with us. I had therefore come to the conclusion that our assailants, who had suffered considerable loss, had now thought better of their undertaking and had abandoned it. Quite a number of our camels had been shot. We took from their packs everything that was most necessary to us, water especially, and, discarding all the less useful things from the burdens of the uninjured camels, replaced them with the indispensables.