Occasionally, one of them would burst into a quavering, hot-blooded
tribal love-song. It happened that I was fairly well known among these
natives through my horse Kochba--of pure Maneghi-Sbeli blood--which I
had purchased from some Anazzi Bedouins who were encamped not far from
Aleppo: a swift and intelligent animal he was, winner of many races, and
in a land where a horse is considerably more valuable than a wife, his
ownership cast quite a glamour over me.

[ILLUSTRATION: THE AUTHOR ON HIS HORSE KOCHBA]

In the evenings, then, the Arabs would come up to chat. As they speak
seldom of their children, of their women-folk never, the conversation
was limited to generalities about the crops and the weather, or to the
recitation of never-ending tales of Abou-Zeid, the famous hero of the
Beni-Hilal, or of Antar the glorious. Politics, of which they have
amazing ideas, also came in for discussion. Napoleon Bonaparte and Queen
Victoria are still living figures to them; but (significantly enough)
they considered the Kaiser king of all the kings of this world, with the
exception of the Sultan, whom they admitted to equality.

Seldom did an evening pass without a dance. As darkness fell, the Arabs
would gather in a great circle around one of their comrades, who
squatted on the ground with a bamboo flute; to a weird minor music they
would begin swaying and moving about while some self-chosen poet among
them would sing impromptu verses to the flute _obbligato_. As a rule the
themes were homely.

"To-morrow we shall eat rice and meat," the singer would wail.

"_Yaha lili-amali"_ (my endeavor be granted), came the full-throated