must drive the attacking force back. But fighting at such
desperately uneven odds could not in the nature of things last long.
There came a minute when Billy, turning to reload, found that before
he could snatch up a handful of cartridges a huge Arab was on top of
him.

Lathrop's clubbed rifle struck the fellow helpless the next minute
and sent his long, cruel knife with a ringing crash to the floor.

Before Billy's half breathed "Thanks, old man," had left his lips,
however, another of Muley-Hassan's followers had rushed in and the
moment would have been Lathrop's last but that Billy drove his fist
into the fellow's face with a crashing blow that knocked him on the
top of his fallen comrade. It was hand-to-hand fighting then with a
vengeance. Billy seized hold of the muzzle of an Arab's revolver as
it was thrust into his very face, and twisted it upward as it was
discharged. Seizing up a camp chair Lathrop swung it round his head
like a club and scattered the brains of a native follower of
Muley-Hassan.

But strategy was to put an abrupt end to the fight even if it could
have continued much longer.

Billy was bleeding from a cut over the forehead which blinded him,
and Lathrop had got two nasty knife thrusts, one in the arm and the
other in the fleshy part of the calf of his leg, when they were
suddenly attacked from the rear by half-a-dozen slavers. The next
minute, wounded and bound, they were as helpless as two captured
puppies.