Page:Buried cities and Bible countries (1891).djvu/192

engaged in hurling stones. Lieutenant Kitchener was struck more than once, and a muleteer was knocked over. The cries which Christians in Palestine have good reason to dread, associated as they are with memories of bloodshed, were now raised by the mob—"Allah! Allah!" and "Din! Din! Mohammed!" the cry of the Damascus massacres. Presently a number of fully-armed men came running down the hill-side, all relatives and retainers of the sheikh, who indeed, it afterwards appeared, was no less a person than 'Aly Agha 'Allân, a near relative of 'Abd el Kâder himself. "I advanced at once" (says Conder) "to meet these assailants, and singled out two men, one a white-bearded elder with a battle-axe, the other a tall man with a club. They addressed me with many curses, and the old man thrust the battle-axe against my ribs; but it was a wonderful instance of the influence which a European may always possess over Arabs, that they allowed me to take them by the arms and turn them round, and that on my telling them to go home, with a slight push in that direction, they actually retreated some little way. Meantime a most extraordinary figure appeared—a black man with pistols in his belt, brandishing a scimitar over his head, and bellowing like a bull. He was the Agha's slave, and bent on revenge; seeing him so near, and seeing also a gun pointed at my head, I retreated to the tents. I could not help laughing, even at so serious a juncture, when I found myself supported by Sergeant Armstrong, who stood at 'the charge' armed with the legs of the camera-obscura! I now saw that Lieutenant Kitchener was opposing another group to my right front, and went forward to him, when I was greeted with a blow on the forehead from a club with nails in it, which brought the blood in a stream down my face. The man who wielded it raised it once more, in order to bring it down on the top of my skull, but luckily I was too quick for him, and ducked my head close to his chest. The blow fell