The _tehha_ is usually achieved with five or six hundred horses, and not unfrequently foot-soldiers accompany the expedition, mounted on camels. Sometimes the tribe that is to be attacked has received timely warning, and been able to adopt measures for defence. The horses are saddled, the arms ready to the hand. A combat takes place, instead of a massacre, and many fall on both sides. The assailants, however, have usually the advantage, as they are not embarrassed with women and children like their adversaries; and it rarely happens that they return home without booty. Perhaps I cannot do better than reproduce in this place one of those popular chaunts which so well depict the rage and the varying fortune of these bloody struggles, that generally originate in love or jealousy. My horse is whiter than snow, Whiter than the winding-sheet of men; He will bound like a gazelle, And will bear me to the tent of thy father. O Yamina, fools are they who foster thy pride, Greater fools they who tell me to forget thee! Would that I were the pin[70] of thy _haïk_; A lock of thy black hair, The _meroueud_[71] that blackens thy eyes, Or, still better, the carpet thou tramplest under foot. I watered my horse at the fountain-head, Then lightly leaped on his back. My _chabir_ are glued to his flanks, And I have faith in my arms as I have faith in my own heart They betrayed me for the moon of my soul, But time shall betray them also. By Allah, O ye vultures! Why hover ye in the air? I ask of Allah to grant us one of those bloody combats, In which every one can die in health and not of disease. You will pass days and nights in gorging yourselves! Our lives and those of our horses, Do they not belong to our maidens? Away, strangers, away! Leave the flowers of our plains To the bees of the country. Away, strangers, away! O the generous One! Behold, then, the night In which our _goums_ shall burn powder Close to the very _douar_ of Yamina, While the women are yet without their girdles, And the horses have iron fastenings on their feet, Before the _aâtatouche_[72] has been placed on the backs of camels, And the horsemen have drawn on their _temag_. Grant that I may receive seven balls in my burnous, Seven balls in my steed, And that I may place seven[73] in the body of my rival. The best of all loves is that which causes gnashing of teeth.