He swept his own arm back, and brought his saber down straight through the sword-arm of the foremost; the limb was cleft through as if the stroke of an ax had severed it, and, thrice infuriated, the Arabs closed in on him.

The points of their weapons were piercing his harness when, sharp and swift, one on another, three shots hissed past him; the nearest of his assailants fell stone dead, and the others, wounded and startled, loosed their hold, shook their reins, and tore off down the lonely road, while the dead man's horse, shaking his burden from him out of the stirrups, followed them at a headlong gallop through a cloud of dust.
"That was a pretty cut through the arm; better had it been through the throat.

Never do things by halves, ami Victor," said Cigarette carelessly, as she thrust her pistols back into her sash, and looked, with the tranquil appreciation of a connoisseur, on the brown, brawny, naked limb, where it lay severed on the sand, with the hilt of the weapon still hanging in the sinewy fingers.

Cecil threw himself from his saddle and gazed at her in bewildered amazement; he had thought those sure, cool, death-dealing shots had come from some Spahi or Chasseur.
"I owe you my life!" he said rapidly.

"But--good God!--you have shot the fellow dead----" Cigarette shrugged her shoulders with a contemptuous glance at the Bedouin's corpse.
"To be sure--I am not a bungler." "Happily for me, or I had been where he lies now.