The Dogras, being on the lower ground, were the first to get within thrusting distance, and closed on a terrified huddle of men swinging this way and that in frenzied efforts to escape like a frightened flock of sheep, and crying out for mercy from the bayonets that pierced them from behind. The mercy meted out to them was the mercy of the Durbar--a swift end, and the scorn of born fighters in their ears; and, as the Bakót levies descended with their crooked knives upon the scurrying flanks, the Saris flung away their arms and fought with each other to escape the avengers. Terrington stopped the pursuit with the utmost difficulty as it came under the fire which Dore was pouring upon the fugitives, and sent volley after volley with deadly effect into the maddened wedge of men penned in the gap. It was absolute butchery, and the struggling men fell to the bullets in sheaves across the road, the life blown out of them at three hundred paces. The Sikhs continued to fire despite Terrington's attempt to stop them so long as any of the flying mob remained beneath them, and then, scampering over to the other side of the ridge, opened on the runaways as they emerged from the defile. Terrington pushed the Dogras forward into the gap as soon as the bullets of the Sikhs had ceased to search it, and discovered at once, in spite of his advantage, the greatness of the task in front of him. Mir Khan, realizing from the sound of battle in the defile the trick which had been played him, was throwing forward every man he could spare to shut Terrington within it till he could extricate the force which Walcot had skilfully drawn after him up the road to Rashát. Terrington gathered at a glance that the disorder which the flight of the panic-stricken Saris was creating in the ranks of the reinforcements offered him the one chance of getting his transport out of the defile and of holding a fighting position on the ground beyond it.