Outlined against the sky he saw the disappearing figure of the blind man, whom he knew hated the woman he loved with a bitterness beyond description; upon the near side he saw, waiting to pass, Yussuf’s Eyes, holding the bitch who hated the Arabian with a hatred which equalled that of the blind man.
The men leapt to their feet at Al-Asad’s cry and flung themselves upon him, then fell back when, making a bugle of his slender hands, he sent the battle-cry ringing over the mountain tops out to the desert.
At the sight of the bitch he had divined the revenge Yussuf the blind had planned; he sent the battle-cry to reach the woman he loved, so that she should know that help was coming.
Again and again he called, until the birds rose twittering and screaming in flocks and flew towards the sunrise, whilst Yussuf whistled to the bitch trotting at the dromedary’s heels, as the great beast, under the urging of the dumb youth, passed across the hidden path at a desperate, dangerous speed.
The women rushed from their quarters at the sound of the battle-cry, which invariably heralded the death of one or more of their menfolk, and beat their breasts as they watched the men, headed by the Nubian, running towards the stables.
“Aï! Aï! Aï!”
The lamentation rose to high heaven as they watched the Nubian take his stallion at a terrific pace down the short cut to the path. They screamed when the magnificent beast fell and rolled to the bottom, where he scrambled to his feet and limped forward a foot or so, whilst Al-Asad, without hesitating, sped to meet the men as they tore like the whirlwind down the made track. He caught the rope-halter of one who outdistanced the rest, and, putting out all his almost superhuman strength, stopped the horse dead in its tracks and hurled it back on its haunches. Clinging to the mane with his left hand, he lifted the rider with his right, flung him to the ground, bent and snatched the spear from his hand, and ran at the stallion’s side up to the end of the path, where he vaulted across its back and disappeared through the cleft with a challenging cry.
Afraid of the Arab who lay stunned across their path, the foremost horses stopped dead in their headlong career, bringing the others up against them in a struggling mass, so that much time was lost as the men tried to straighten out the confusion made by the horses jamming on the narrow path as each struggled to free itself from its neighbour, whilst they slipped and reared and fell.
The rim of the sun had just shown above the horizon; the Nubian was a speck in the far distance; of Yussuf and “His Eyes” and the Arabian there was no sign in the shadows which still shrouded the vast ocean of sand, when, headed by the Patriarch, with much shouting and firing of rifles, the whole band, riding at full speed, swept across the desert.