"What shall we do?" asked the helpless men.

Above them the rocks rose wild and horrent, apparently
inaccessible, but the keen eye of our Hubert detected one path, a
mere goat path, used perhaps also by shepherds.

"Follow me," he said, and leaving the stream ascended the path, a
veritable mauvais pas. At the height of some two hundred feet it
struck inward through a wild region.

"Here we must make a stand at this summit," said Hubert, "and meet
the dogs. I will give a good account of them."

He descended a little way to a point where the dogs could only
ascend by a very narrow cleft in the rocks, and there he waited for
the first dog. Soon a hideous black hound appeared, and with
flashing eyes and gaping jaws sprang at our hero. He was received
with a sweep of the scimitar, which cleft his diabolical head in
twain, and he rolled down the deep declivity, all mangled and
bleeding, to the foot, missing the path and falling from rock to
rock, so that when he was found by the party who followed they
could not tell by what means he had received his first wound.

And when the other dogs arrived at the spot, which was deluged in
gore, after the wont of their race they would follow the scent no
farther.

Meanwhile our little party of five rescued captives went joyfully
forward with renewed hope, until midday, when they found a cool
spot by the side of the streams leading to the waters of Merom--the