and had got the blood-thirst upon them;
roused and burning with brandy and raki, these men were like tigers to
deal with; the words he had spoken they never heard, and their horses
hemmed him in powerless, while their steel flashed on every side--they
were not of the tribe of Khalifa.

If he struck not, and struck not surely, he saw that a few moments more
of that moonlight night were all that he would live. He wished to avoid
bloodshed, both because his  were always with the conquered
tribes, and because he knew that every one of these quarrels and combats
between the vanquisher and the vanquished served further to widen the
breach, already broad enough, between them. But it was no longer a
matter of choice with him, as his shoulder was grazed by a thrust which,
but for a swerve of his horse, would have pierced to his lungs; and
the four riders, yelling like madmen, forced the animal back on his
haunches, and assaulted him with breathless violence. He swept his own
arm back, and brought his saber down straight through the sword-arm of
the foremost; the limb was cleft through as if the stroke of an ax had
severed it, and, thrice infuriated, the Arabs closed in on him. The