'How can that happen?' I exclaimed again.
Rashîd could not at once reply, because in our avoidance of those human relics we found ourselves on broken ground and among trunks of trees, which called for the address of all our wits. But when the horses once more plodded steadily, he assured me that the thing could happen, and had happened often in that country, where men's blood is hot. He told me how a band of brigands once, in Anti-Lebanon, had fought over their spoils till the majority on both sides had been slain, and the survivors were so badly wounded that they could not move, but lay and died upon the battlefield; and how the people of two villages, both men and women, being mad with envy, had held a battle with the same result. I interrupted him with questions. Both of us were glad to talk in order to get rid of the remembrance of our former fear. We gave the rein to our imaginations, speaking eagerly.
Reverting to the severed limbs which we had seen, Rashîd exclaimed:
'Now I will tell your Honour how it happened. A deadly insult had been offered to a family in a young girl's dishonour. Her father and her brothers killed her to wipe out the shame—as is the custom here among the fellâhîn—and then with all their relatives waylaid the men of the insulter's house when these were cutting wood here in the forest. There was a furious battle, lasting many hours. The combatants fought hand-to-hand with rustic weapons, and in some cases tore each other limb from limb. When all was done, the victors were themselves so sorely wounded that they were able to do nothing but lie down and die.'
'How many do you think there were?' I asked, believing.
'To judge by scent alone, not one or two; but, Allah knows, perhaps a hundred!' said Rashîd reflectively.
'It is strange they should have lain there undiscovered.'
'Not strange, when one remembers that the spot is far from any village and probably as far from the right road,' was his reply.
This last conjecture was disquieting; but we were both too much excited for anxiety.
'It is an event to be set down in histories,' Rashîd exclaimed. 'We shall be famous people when we reach the village. Such news is heard but once in every hundred years.'