The women were trying to prevent Helen from reaching her lover, and the men were endeavouring, and none too gently, to push the women on one side, so that the white man they had come to admire and like might meet the woman of his heart. They did it for the sport of the thing, and to assert their authority over their women; also, in their heart of hearts was there a certain amount of admiration for Helen’s beauty and courage.
The women who had come to titter and jeer at Helen’s bald head were consumed with wrath at their disappointment and fought their men tooth and nail, taking advantage of the scrum to pay off many an old score and avenge many a lash of the whip or tongue. The men, amused at first, then astounded, then really angry at this sudden exhibition of women’s rights, slapped their own particular womenfolk with the flat of their hand, then smote them smartly with the mihjan, and finally shook them violently until their sleek heads seemed like to leave their shoulders and their beautiful teeth to break in their chattering.
Ralph Trenchard stood at the back of the men who slapped and shook and cursed; Helen stood, looking towards him, towering above the dusky little women like a young acacia tree in the bush.
In spite of the peril in which they knew themselves to stand, they smiled across and called messages to each other, which were lost in the universal torrents of abuse and vociferous yelling, interspersed with screams and sounds of slapping and tearing.
Namlah, wedged on the outer circle of the maelstrom, fought like a fury to get at Helen, screaming abuse, hurling her fighting sisters from her path in the excess of her seeming rage, whilst Yussuf, led by “His Eyes,” rattled his staff on the shins of the gentler sex as he strove to reach Namlah.
Bowlegs brought about their meeting.
Aided by the mighty muscle of his legs, he leapt free of the shrieking sisterhood high into the air and, in a manner somewhat reminiscent of a hawk and a field mouse, pounced upon his second and obese wife, whom he had spied fighting with the best in much torn raiment.
The tremendous impact from above flung her backwards against Namlah, who in her turn was flung backwards against Yussuf.
Proceeded a pretty passage of arms and tongues between these two, during which the blind man slipped a silver bottle down the front of Namlah’s torn qamis whilst she belaboured him, and “Yussuf’s Eyes” rained blows upon his mother’s back.
“Aï! aï! aï!” she wailed, as she rolled the flask in the top part of her torn petticoat. “Would’st tear the very tannurah from my limbs, thou wifeless, childless, breaker of the Prophet’s law? Push me forward—ha! thou would’st push me forward, thou rascal son of mine, even unto the first line of my fighting sisters. Well, push, push hard, so that I leave the mark of my nails upon the white girl’s face!”