"Not hit, Alick?" asked Adair, as they scampered back as hard as their legs would carry them. "No; I hope you are not," said Murray. "Can't say for a certainty," answered Terence; "I feel a funny stinging sensation in my side as if something or other was the matter." Whatever it was it did not impede his speed. At length it seemed to strike the Egyptians that though they could not manage to knock over the young giaours with their matchlocks they might with their scimitars; so a band of fierce-looking fellows with long moustachios, wonderfully wide breeches, and gleaming blades, sallied out of the fortress to endeavour to overtake them. The Egyptians ran very fast and felt very savage, but they might just as well have tried to catch three active tomcats. Dick Needham, their companion, was the first to perceive that the enemy was in pursuit of them. "There's a lot on 'em a scampering after us, sir," he observed coolly. "All right," answered Terence. "Their friends inside the fort, then, will be less likely to keep firing at us; and I should like to see the followers of the prophet, whether Turk or Egyptian, who can catch us in a fair race like this." To do them justice, however, the enemy made good play over the ground. The outside garden wall was reached and leaped, and now the three adventurers had a fair run for it along the beach towards their boat with the red-capped gentlemen, as Adair called them, in hot pursuit. A long straggling branch of a tree had been thrown upon the beach. Adair did not observe it, and suddenly he found himself toppled over on his head. He thought that he had broken his leg. "Take the flag and run, Alick," he exclaimed, throwing the flag-staff to Murray. "Never mind me, I'm too much, hurt to move." "Not when I have a pair of legs to run off with you, sir," cried Dick Needham, lifting Paddy upon his shoulders, running off with him as if he had been a baby. "It was not for that, sir, that I comed here to look after you."