"Oh, the cads! the confounded cads!" he shouted, and his eyes were congested with rage.
It was the fate of the poor donkey-boys which had carried the self-contained soldier out of his usual calm.

During the firing they had remained huddled, a pitiable group, among the rocks at the base of the hill.

Now upon the conviction that the charge of the Dervishes must come first upon them, they had sprung upon their animals with shrill, inarticulate cries of fear, and had galloped off across the plain.
A small flanking-party of eight or ten camel-men had worked round while the firing had been going on, and these dashed in among the flying donkey-boys, hacking and hewing with a cold-blooded, deliberate ferocity.

One little boy, in a flapping Galabeeah, kept ahead of his pursuers for a time, but the long stride of the camels ran him down, and an Arab thrust his spear into the middle of his stooping back.

The small, white-clad corpses looked like a flock of sheep trailing over the desert.
But the people upon the rock had no time to think of the cruel fate of the donkey-boys.