As the Moslem troops were defiling through a narrow pass in the valley of Honein, the ambushed foe suddenly charged upon them with such impetuosity that they first hesitated, then recoiled and fled in utter panic. “Whither away?” shouted Mohammed, while the broken columns sped by him. “The Prophet of the Lord is here! Return! return!” But his lungs were unequal to the emergency, so he bade Al-Abbas try the strength of his voice; and his uncle used his stentorian oratory to such good effect that it rose above the clamorous turmoil of retreat. A number of the penitent fighters came shamefacedly back, and, shouting out, “Ya Labbeik! Here we are, ready at thy call!” stopped the flight of the rest and turned to face the pursuing Bedouins. Mohammed, gazing at the bloody spectacle from the safety of an adjacent hill, was so overpowered with warlike ardor that he screamed: “Now is the furnace heated; I am the Prophet that lieth not; the seed of Abd al-Muttalib!” Then, hurling a fistful of gravel at the foe, he continued: “Ruin seize them! I swear they are discomfited. By the Lord of the Kaba, they yield! God hath cast fear into their hearts.” The hard-won victory was indeed so complete that thousands of prisoners, forty thousand sheep and goats, and four thousand ounces of silver were seized as spoil. And the Prophet, repenting of his self-confidence before the battle, indited a Sura which stated that the preliminary defeat had been caused by over-confidence in numbers, and that success had come only because God “sent down Hosts which ye saw not, and thereby punished the Unbelievers.” Yet he realized that, in order to clinch the victory, it would be imperative to capture the Bedouin stronghold at At-Taif. In assaulting that place he trusted, in addition to the heavenly hosts, to the most modern Byzantine inventions of warfare--the testudo and the catapult. But they both proved to be ineffective, for the simple reason that the besieged garrison destroyed the wooden testudo by hurling molten metal upon it, thus making it impossible to use the catapult at all. As the weary weeks dragged on, Mohammed endeavored to expedite the surrender of the fort by destroying the vineyards around At-Taif and offering freedom to any slaves who would desert the stronghold; but even these traditional devices proved to be useless, and, warned by a dream that the heavenly will was not in favor of continuing the siege, he decided to accept the counsels of his assistants, who were also getting very tired of the business. The Prophet then withdrew to the place where the booty won at Honein had been stored.