lunged through the ford singly; so they followed her, and all day she
rode forward on horseback, touching neither food nor drink. By night she
was a league beyond the foremost of them, and fell upon the King encamped
in the Desert, with the loose remnant of his forces. Mashalleed, when he
had looked on her, forgot his affliction, and stood up to embrace her,
but Bhanavar spurned him, crying, 'A time for this in the time of
disgrace?' Then she said, 'How came it?'

He answered, 'There was a Chief among the enemy, an Arab, before the
terror of whom my people fled.'

Cried she, 'Conquer him on the morrow, and till then I eat not, drink
not, sleep not.'

On the morrow Mashalleed again encountered the rebels, and Bhanavar,
seated on her elephant, from a sand-hillock under a palm, beheld the
prowess of the Arab Chief and the tempest of battle that he was. She
thought, 'I have seen but one mighty in combat like that one, Ruark, the
Chief of the Beni-Asser.' Thereupon she coursed toward the King, even
where the arrows gloomed like locusts, thick and dark in the air aloof,
and said, 'The victory is with yonder Chief! Hurl on him three of thy
sons of valour.'

The three were selected, and made onslaught on this Chief, and perished
under his arm.

Bhanavar saw them fall, and exclaimed, 'Another attack on him, and with
thrice three!'

Her will was the mandate of Mashalleed, and these likewise were ordered
forth, and closed on the Chief, but he darted from their toils and
wheeled about them, spearing them one by one till the nine were in the
dust. Bhanavar compressed her dry lips and muttered to the King, 'Head
thou a body against him.'

Mashalleed gathered round his standard the chosen of his warriors, and
smoothed his beard, and headed them. Then the Chief struck his lance
behind him, and stretched rapidly a half-circle across the sand, and
halted on a knoll. When they neared him he retreated in a further
half-circle, and continued this wise, wasting the fury of Mashalleed,
till he stood among his followers. There, as the King hesitated and
prepared to retreat, he and the others of the tribe levelled their lances
and hung upon his rear, fretting them, slaughtering captains of the
troop. When Mashalleed turned to face his pursuer, the Chief was alone,
immovable on his mare, fronting the ranks. Then Bhanavar taunted the
King, and he essayed the capture of that Chief a second time and a third,
and it was each time as the fir