I begged to be excused. The essence of the fantasia is to show off one's own prowess and one's horse's paces while careering madly in a widish circle round some given object--an open carriage with some great one in it, or a bridal pair--taking no note of obstacles, dashing over rocks and gulleys and down breakneck slopes, loading and firing off a gun at intervals, in full career. I had tried the feeling of it once at a friend's wedding, and had been far from happy, though my horse enjoyed the romp and often tried to start it afterwards when there was no occasion. Remembering Abdul Hamid and his desire for praise that day, I said: 'There is only one good horseman here--Abdul Hamid, the son of the Sheykh Mustafa. All the rest of us, compared with him, are mere pedestrians.' I pointed out the youth in question to my neighbour, who was a man of power in the mountains, and he praised the beauty of his form on horseback. 'By Allah, right is with thee,' he assented. 'There is none but he.' Away they went--Jinblats, Talhuks, and Abdul Meliks--all in clean white turbans, with coloured cloaks a-stream upon the breeze, on horses gorgeously caparisoned. We waited half an hour--in silence, as it seemed; and then we heard the noise of their return, the shouts, the firing. I swear I saw a horse and man surmount a housetop in the village and then leap down upon the other side. At last, with yells and reckless gunshots and a whirl of dust, the crowd of horsemen came full tilt on the meydan. Their leader--in appearance a mad angel--was my friend, Abdul Hamid. Suddenly he drew his rein, flinging the steed right back upon his haunches. In so doing, looking up at me with a triumphant smile, he somehow missed his balance and pitched clear over his horse's head, just at the very moment when a carriage and pair containing the beaming Consul-General and his lady, with a glorious Cawwas upon the box, arrived upon the scene. I ran to help him, but another person was before me. A tall old man, whose garb bespoke him an initiated Druze, rushed out among the horses and the dust and beat the wretched lad about the shoulders, heaping curses on that lovely head for bringing shame upon an honoured house before such company. It was the lad's own father, the Sheykh Mustafa. I helped to drag the old man off, and would have gone on to console the son; but just then I beheld Sheytan approaching with a broken head-rope. I contrived to catch him and to mount without attending to the girths; and, once on horseback, I was glad to be there; for quite fifty of the tethered steeds had broken loose in the excitement, and were rushing here and there and fighting in a most alarming way. I have always had a dread of horse-fights, and this was not a single fight; it was a melee, fresh horses every minute breaking loose to join it. Right in my way two angry stallions rose up, boxing one another like the lion and the unicorn, and a little boy of ten or thereabouts ran in between and,