“Eh wallah!” echoed Fawwâz and Sfâga. “He who mounts and rides her sits on the throne of a king....” “A king in very truth!” cried Fawwâz. “If the goal be far, to her the remote is near....” “Near indeed!” burst from the audience. “More stealthy than stallions, more swift than the jinn a-wing, She turns the gazelle that hides from her blast in fear.” “Allah!” Fawwâz punctuated the stanza. “Not from idle lips was gathered the wisdom I sing....” “God forbid!” exclaimed Fawwâz, leaning forward eagerly. “In the whole wide plain she has not met with her peer.” “Mâshallah! it is so! it is the truth, oh lady!” said Ḥussein. “I did not quite understand it all,” said I humbly, feeling rather like Alice in Wonderland when Humpty Dumpty recited his verses to her. “Perhaps you will help me to write it down this evening.” So that night, with the assistance of Fawwâz, who had a bowing acquaintance with letters, we committed it to paper, and I now know how the masterpieces of the great singers were received at the fair of ’Ukâẓ in the Days of Ignorance. “The truth! it is the truth!” shouted the tribes between each couplet. “Eh by Al Lât and by Al ’Uzzah!” Three hours from Abu Jîr we cantered down to the Wâdî Themail and saw some black tents pitched by a tell on the farther side. Flocks of goats were scattered over the plain; the shepherds, when they perceived our party, drew them together and began to drive them towards the tents. At this Muḥammad pulled up, rose in his stirrups, and waved a long white cotton sleeve over his head--a flag of truce. “They take us for raiders,” said he, laughing. “Wallah, in a moment we should have had their rifles upon us.” The mound of Themail is crowned by a fort built of mud and unshaped stones (Fig. 68). It has a single door and round bastions at the angles of the wall, like Khubbâz, but the figure described by the walls is far from regular, and there is no trace of construction within. The existing building looked to me like rough Bedouin work, though I suspect that it has taken the place of older defences (Fig. 69). A copious sulphur spring rises below it and flows into the cornfields of the Deleim. With a supply of water so plentiful Themail must always have been a place worth holding. We stayed for an hour to lunch, Muḥammad’s kinsmen supplementing our fare with a bowl of sour curds. Fawwâz was all for spending the night here, for there would be no tents at ’Asîleh, where we meant to camp, and the noonday stillness was broken by a loud altercation between him and the indignant Fattûḥ. I paid no attention until the case was brought to me for decision--the final court of appeal should always be silent up to the moment when an opinion is requested--and then said that we should undoubtedly sleep at ’Asîleh. [Illustration: FIG. 69.--THEMAIL.]