The Talbot Mundy Megapack. Talbot Mundy

him make the most of it; for as surely as the moon will shine tonight—as surely as thine eyes are worth a ransom—I will slay ninety and nine Avengers—aye! And burn Arabia for one more look into Ayisha’s eyes!”

      The Avenger overheard that, and felt rather flattered. He tossed back over his shoulder a mocking invitation to Narayan Singh to come and fight him single-handed for the girl at any time. So we all parted in a rare good temper, Ayisha having the last word, as a lady should.

      “A Pathan is a pig, but thou art not so bad as some pigs!” she called back to Narayan Singh; and thereafter, all the way back home to El-Kalil, the gang kept chaffing him unmercifully about different breeds of pigs, pretending to wonder wherein he was so obviously different from the rest.

      But that was because they knew he was a Sikh, and that the Sikhs don’t object to pigs at all. If he had really been a Pathan those jokes would have cost a life or two.

      We were a whole day longer on the road home than if we had taken the shortest way. Grim led us over a waterless route to the southward; and the proof of the wisdom of that was the sight we had of a party of camel-men, led almost certainly by Jael Higg, who reached a ravine too late to intercept us. For about an hour they followed in hot pursuit and then, giving up the chase, sat their camels on a ridge five miles away and watched us gloomily until we disappeared from view.

      Spirits rose high after that; for the danger was all behind and El-Kalil in front, with the suk and the coffee-shops, where Ali Baba and his sons and grandsons could boast and lie to their hearts’ content about our lawless doings.

      Mahommed, the gang poet, rose to the occasion nobly with an epic song of our adventure; and being a poet, of course he wasn’t hampered by any such trivialities as facts. If a story is worth singing, it is worth enlarging on; so he enlarged, to everybody’s satisfaction. I remember a few stanzas; he sang the story part, composing as he went along, and we all thundered the refrain:

      Saoud the Avenger—

      Sing of the Avenger!—

      Akbar the Avenger!—

      Struck the earth in anger,

      Swore an oath in anger.

      Vowed before his captains

      He will harry Ali Higg!

      Akbar the Avenger!

      Down with Ali Higg!

      Saoud the Avenger—

      Sing of the Avenger!

      Akbar the Avenger!—

      Summoned all his camel-men,

      Made the desert dark with them;

      Twenty-five machine-guns

      Sent he in advance.

      Tap-ap-ap machine-guns

      Sent he in advance!

      Half a hundred captains—

      Each he had a squadron;

      Half a hundred squadrons!—

      Swore to do his bidding;

      Allah bear them witness,

      They will enter Petra,

      The hold of Ali Higg!

      Burn and plunder Petra,

      The hold of Ali Higg!

      Akbar the Avenger! Akbar the Avenger!

      He shall eat up Petra,

      The abode of Ali Higg!

      Lo! The Lion of Petra—

      Ha! the Lion of Petra!

      Ali Higg of Petra!—

      Rose and cursed in answer

      Swearing by the Prophet,

      Father of a thousand boils,

      Father of a rage!

      Wallah! Ya, the wrath of him!

      Roaring Ali Higg!

      Summoned he Ayisha—

      Shellabi Ayisha [Beautiful Ayisha],

      Starry-eyed Ayisha!—

      Bade her lead his camel-men

      Straight at the Avenger,

      Meet him at the desert wells,

      Give him battle there!

      Shellabi Ayisha!

      Shellabi kabir! [Supremely beautiful!]

      Called he his commander—

      Father of commanders,

      Fiercest of commanders!—

      Gave him, too, a thousand

      Princes of the desert,

      Bade him and Ayisha

      Bring him Saoud’s head!

      Shellabi Ayisha!

      Ibrahim ben Ah!

      It was a first-class song, with never an end to it, for Mahommed added stanza after stanza as the days wore by. It included finally a wonderful account of my defeat of Mujrim in the Valley of Moses, and Mujrim was made the hero of it by the ingenious process of ascribing fearful and supernatural qualities to me. But the whole song was merely a setting for the wholly fictitious story of Grim’s conquest in battle of the allied “thousands” of the Avenger and Ali Higg combined, winding up with a gorgeous climax, in which Grim carried off “Shellabi Ayisha” from under the eyes of both of them. Grim was the hero of the epic, and however long the song grew by day, it always ended with a final crashing chorus:

      Akbar! Akbar! Jimgrim! Jimgrim!

      We sang it all the way home, and roared it in the narrow streets of El-Kalil; and although I suppose that Homer may have been more truthful, I’ve a notion he is an overrated epic-builder in comparison to my friend Mahommed ben Ali Baba ben Hamza, youngest son of Ali Baba, dean of thieves and wiliest old fox in Palestine.

      Sing of Mahommed—

      Ben Ali ben Hamza!