From inside we heard a regular din of battle commencing--loud shouts and irregular rifle-fire--and I followed Grim out in a hurry.
There was no enemy in sight.

Old Ali Baba was busy reloading his rifle fifty paces away in front of the temple door, facing us with his sons, in a semicircle around him, and they were shooting at something over our heads.

Grim laughed rather bitterly.
"My mistake," he said.

"I ought to have thought of that." So I went out to see.
Surmounting the temple front, at least a hundred feet above the pavement and perfectly inaccessible, was a beautifully carved stone urn surmounting a battered image of some god or goddess.

It was in shadow, because the cliff wall, from which the temple had been carved, overhung it; so it was peculiarly difficult to hit, even at that range; but they were all firing away at it as if Ali Higg and all his men were hidden behind the thing.