According to the Arabian custom, the fray opened with a series of individual combats. Three Meccan warriors stepped vaingloriously forth, daring the three best men among the Moslems to face them; and valorous Hamza, impetuous Ali, and Obeida the septuagenarian rushed forward to accept the challenge. The swords of Hamza and Ali soon dripped with the lifeblood of two Koreishites; when Obeida fell severely wounded, they sprang to his aid and simultaneously delivered two lusty strokes that killed the third. Then, raising the cry, “Ye conquerors, strike!” the serried Moslem ranks hurled themselves against the enemy; but the Prophet himself, while the deadly yet indecisive struggle was being waged, played an ambiguous part. Friendly traditions state that he bounded about with a sword in his hand. Those of another sort relate that, upon observing the first shedding of blood, he retired to his hut and swooned; that, upon being revived, he poured forth the most energetic prayers; and that, even before the battle commenced, he had taken pains to have a swift camel tied to his tent as a last resource against the possible calamity of defeat. Still other narratives assert that he occupied himself principally in reminding his accomplices that Paradise awaited those who perished for Islam--a promise whose validity he himself seems to have been indisposed to test. For Mohammed, no less than many other religiously-minded emperors and tsars, appears to have conducted himself in battle according to the wise principle that a head without a halo is infinitely more desirable than a halo without a head. While the disorderly Meccan forces were being steadily pressed back by the close-joined Moslem ranks, a furious storm of wind arose. Until this time, Mohammed seems to have been rather sceptical concerning the issue of his prayers; but, now that the foe was beginning to waver, he doubted no longer. “That,” he exclaimed while the tempest raged, “is Gabriel with a thousand angels charging down upon the foe.” Then, stooping and grabbing up a handful of small stones, he rose and hurled them at the Koreish, accompanying his action with the shout, “Confusion seize their faces!” This double assault, timed at the psychological moment, could not fail to have effect. The broken and shaken Meccan ranks--thoroughly discomfited by a lack of discipline, by a merely lukewarm interest in fighting their quondam neighbors and friends, and, as their own satirists abundantly pointed out later, by actual cowardice--cracked apart and fled in complete dismay, to be harassed and killed or captured by the pursuing Moslems. Mohammed lost but fourteen men in the encounter, whereas more than a hundred Koreish were slain or taken prisoners.