Akbar!_
Red with blood is the realm he owns!
Bzz-u-wzz-uzz the blood-fly drones!
Crack-ak-ak-ak! The crunching bones!
_Akbar! Akbar! Akbar Ali Higg!_

"Jackals feed on Ali's trail!
_Akbar! Akbar!_
Speed and strength and numbers fail!
_Akbar! Akbar!_
Swooping along in a cloud of sand,
Killing and conquering out of hand
Hasten the slayers of Ali's band!
_Akbar! Akbar! Akbar Ali Higg!_

"Camel and horse and fat-tail sheep,
_Akbar! Akbar!_
Ali's kite-eyed herdsmen keep!
_Akbar! Akbar!_
Gold and silver and gems of the best,
Amber and linen and silks attest
What are the profits of Ali's quest!
_Akbar! Akbar! Akbar Ali Higg!_

"Fair are the fortunes of Ali's men!
_Akbar! Akbar!_
Each has slave-women eight or ten!
_Akbar! Akbar!_
Ho! Where the dust of the desert swirls
Over the plain as his cohort whirls,
Oho! the screams of the plundered girls!
_Akbar! Akbar! Akbar Ali Higg!_"

-------------
* Akbar means "great."

** Mishmish--apricot. In that land of drought and desolation the
highest compliment you can pay a man is to call him lord of water
and ripening fruit.
-------------

There was any amount more of it, but most of the rest was not
polite enough for print, because the Arab likes to enter into
details. It sounded much better in Arabic, anyhow. And more and
more frequently as the song grew lurid and they warmed to the
refrain they made their point by changing the third Akbar
into Jimgrim:

_"Akbar! Akbar! Jimgrim Ali Higg!"_

It suited their sense of humor finely to announce to the wind and
the kites that Grim, the strict, straight, ethical American was a
ravisher of virgins and a slitter of offenseless throats, who
knew no mercy--a man without law in this world or prospect of
peace in the next.

When we reached an oasis about noon--sweet water and thirty or
forty palm-trees--and simply had to camp there because the camels
were exhausted after a night and half a day of strenuous
marching, they were still so full of high spirits that they had
to work them off somehow; and unwittingly I provided the excuse.

I was on the lee side of a camel, opening a boil in Mujrim's leg
with his razor, when I caught sight of one of the younger men
trying to burgle the medicine-chest. I yelled at him, and
naturally gashed my patient's leg, who rose in giant wrath and
with enormou