Now, they had passed the cultivated fields, and were halting by the ford of a river bordering the Desert, when lo! a warrior on the yonside, riding in a cloud of dust, and his shout was, ’The King Mashalleed is defeated, and flying.’  Then the Captains of the host witnessed to the greatness of Allah, and were troubled with a dread, fearing to advance; but Bhanavar commanded a horse to be saddled for her, and mounted it, and plunged through the ford singly; so they followed her, and all day she rode forward on horseback, touching neither food nor drink.  By night she was a league beyond the foremost of them, and fell upon the King encamped in the Desert, with the loose remnant of his forces.  Mashalleed, when he had looked on her, forgot his affliction, and stood up to embrace her, but Bhanavar spurned him, crying, ‘A time for this in the time of disgrace?’ Then she said, ‘How came it?’

He answered, ’There was a Chief among the enemy, an Arab, before the terror of whom my people fled.’

Cried she, ’Conquer him on the morrow, and till then I eat not, drink not, sleep not.’

On the morrow Mashalleed again encountered the rebels, and Bhanavar, seated on her elephant, from a sand-hillock under a palm, beheld the prowess of the Arab Chief and the tempest of battle that he was.  She thought, ’I have seen but one mighty in combat like that one, Ruark, the Chief of the Beni-Asser.’  Thereupon she coursed toward the King, even where the arrows gloomed like locusts, thick and dark in the air aloof, and said, ’The victory is with yonder Chief!  Hurl on him three of thy sons of valour.’

The three were selected, and made onslaught on this Chief, and perished under his arm.

Bhanavar saw them fall, and exclaimed, ’Another attack on him, and with thrice three!’

Her will was the mandate of Mashalleed, and these likewise were ordered forth, and closed on the Chief, but he darted from their toils and wheeled about them, spearing them one by one till the nine were in the dust.  Bhanavar compressed her dry lips and muttered to the King, ’Head thou a body against him.’

Mashalleed gathered round his standard the chosen of his warriors, and smoothed his beard, and headed them.  Then the Chief struck his lance behind him, and stretched rapidly a half-circle across the sand, and halted on a knoll.  When they neared him he retreated in a further half-circle, and continued this wise, wasting the fury of Mashalleed, till he stood among his followers.  There, as the King hesitated and prepared to retreat, he and the others of the tribe levelled their lances and hung upon his rear, fretting them, slaughtering captains of the troop.  When Mashalleed turned to face his pursuer, the Chief was alone, immovable on his mare, fronting the ranks.  Then Bhanavar taunted the King, and he essayed the capture of that Chief a second time and a third, and it was each time as the first.  Bhanavar looked