Their plan is to hold us here, and pick us off one by one--wipe us out, without losing a man! "Dig in again! That's our only game now.

We're facing a situation that's going to tax us to the utmost, but there's only one thing to do--dig in!" Life itself lay in digging, death in exposure to the fire of those maddeningly elusive, unseen Bedouins.

Like so many dogs the Legionaries once more fell to excavating, with their knives and their bare hands, the sun-baked sand that slithered back again into their shallow trench almost as fast as they could throw it out.
A ragged fire from the Beni Harb lent speed to their efforts.

Dead men and wounded could now have no attention.

Life itself was all at stake.
In their rude trench they lay at last, sweating, panting, covered with sand and dust, with thirst beginning to take hold on them, and increasing swarms of flies--tiny, vicious, black things, all sting and poison--beginning to hum about them.