Then I returned to the top of the rise and lay down, praying to God, with a trooper beside me who might run and try to shake Ranjoor Singh back to life in case of direst need.
I lay and heard my heart beat like a drum against the ground, praying one moment, and with the next breath cursing some hoof-beat from behind me and the muffled reprimand that was certain to follow it.

The men were as afraid as I, and the thing I feared most of all was panic.

Yet what more could I do than I had done?
I lay and watched the camels, and every step that brought them nearer felt like a link in a chain that bound us all.
One thing became perfectly evident before long.

There were not more than two hundred camels, therefore in a fight we should be able to beat them off easily.

But unless we could ambuscade them (and there was no time to prepare that now) it would be impossible to kill or capture them all.