"O rejected ones, and sons of the rejected!" the Arab howled. "O hogs and brothers of hogs!" He fell to gnawing his own hand, as Arabs will in an excess of passion. Once more he screamed: "O Allah, deny not their skin and bones to the eternal flame! O owls, oxen, beggars, cut-off ones! Oh, give them the burning oil, Allah! The cold faces! Oh, wither their hands! Make them kusah! (beardless). Oh, these swine with black livers, gray eyes, beards of red. Vilest that ever hammered tent-pegs, goats of El Akhfash! O Beni Harb![1]"
[Footnote 1: Beni Harb, or Sons of Battle, by a change in the aspiration of the "H," becomes "Sons of Flight, or Cowardice.">[
The Master gripped his furious orderly, and pushed him back, down the slope.
"No more of that, Rrisa!" he commanded, fiercely. "These be old woman's ways, these screamings! Silence, Bismillah!"
He hailed the others.
"They score, the first round! Their game is to retreat, if they're suspicious of any ruse or any attack from us. They're not going to stand and fight. We can't get near enough to them to throw the remaining lethal capsules over. And we can't chase them into the desert. Their plan is to hold us here, and pick us off one by one—wipe us out, without losing a man!
"Dig in again! That's our only game now. We're facing a situation that's going to tax us to the utmost, but there's only one thing to do—dig in!"
Life itself lay in digging, death in exposure to the fire of those maddeningly elusive, unseen Bedouins. Like so many dogs the Legionaries once more fell to excavating, with their knives and their bare hands, the sun-baked sand that slithered back again into their shallow trench almost as fast as they could throw it out.
A ragged fire from the Beni Harb lent speed to their efforts. Dead men and wounded could now have no attention. Life itself was all at stake.
In their rude trench they lay at last, sweating, panting, covered with sand and dust, with thirst beginning to take hold on them, and increasing swarms of flies—tiny, vicious, black things, all sting and poison—beginning to hum about them. On watch they rested there, while dull umbers of nightfall glowered through the framework of Nissr, tossing in the surf. Without much plan, wrecked, confronted by what seemed perils unsurmountable, the Flying Legion waited for the coming of dark to respite them from sniping.