Some were armed with long muskets of antique form, but by far the greater number had Remington rifles--flung away by Arabi's fugitive soldiers--slung over their backs, or at their saddles, weapons that had superseded the javelin, the bow, and in many instances the spear. They were clad in barracans of dark brown wool, with floating burnouses, many of them spotlessly white; and as they seemed to be making slowly, for shelter doubtless, towards the clump of palms occupied by Allan's party, which was yet beyond their range of vision, he drew the whole off and took post behind the bank of the abandoned railway, a movement which was fortunately quite unseen by the foe. Formation against cavalry would be useless, as these wild horsemen have no idea of tactics; and, to deceive them as to his force, Allan formed his men in extended order, three paces apart, each man lying on his face, close under the line of the embankment. Allan knew from experience how fire from a steep slope becomes plunging; thus he congratulated himself that the slope for his musketry was one that was parallel to the trajectory of the rifles. By a single word he could, if necessary, form his men in a rallying square on the crest of the line. As the Bedouins came riding forward, in a disorderly group, at an easy, ambling pace, Allan, by means of his field-glass, was certain that in their leader he recognised the Arab, Zeid-el-Ourdeh, whom he had succoured after his wounds at Kassassin, and sent to the hospital at Ismailia. He was wearing the same robes with wide sleeves, and the richly embroidered girdle he wore when found near the camp. 'Steady and still, men,' cried Allan, 'and we'll play old gooseberry with these beggars, as we have done everywhere else.' They were about five hundred paces distant, a range for which the rifles were sighted, when suddenly a Bedouin uttered a shrill cry of alarm, and all began to unsling their firearms. His eye had detected a clay-coloured helmet with its red hackle on the left side. Ere they could fire a shot, the Highlanders from their cover poured in a deadly fire, and more than twenty men and horses went down in confused heaps; the latter, in the agony of their wounds and terror, kicking and lashing wildly out with their hoofs, raising clouds of sand, while braining the skulls and breaking the limbs of the fallen riders, whether dead or wounded; then shrieks and groans, cries and curses loaded the air, as all who were untouched or able to keep their saddles, after firing, half at random, a ragged volley, wheeled round their light chargers and went off with the speed of the wind. 'Cease firing!' cried Allan Graham; 'we have taught these fellows a lesson severe enough for the day, and I don't think they will venture near Matarieh again.' In that, however, he was mistaken, as he afterwards found to his cost.