"Dig in!" Right well he knew the futility, the suicidal folly of trying to charge some three hundred entrenched men with a handful of panting, exhausted soldiers armed only with revolvers.
"Take cover!" his cry rang along the beach.

They obeyed.

Under a galling fire that flung stinging sand into their faces and that took toll of two more Legionaries, wounded, the expedition dug for its very life.
The best of strategy! The only strategy, the Master knew, as--panting a little, with thick, black hair glued by sea-water to his head--he flattened himself into a little depression in the sand, where the first ripple of the dunes began.
Hot was the sand, and dry.

Withered camel-grass grew in dejected tufts here, there, interspersed with a few straggles of half a.

A jackal's skull, bleached, lay close to the Master's right hand.