death shall End him, though he have a ladder long enough to climb to
heaven upon. Better is death than shame! Fear rather for thine own
honor, girl--urge on thy beast while Rabyah holds them back!'
Then Rabyah, alone, strove against all the swarm of Sulaim.
Now in Arabia there was no archer more skilful than Rabyah, and he bent
his bow against the pursuers; and with his first shaft he pierced the
throat of a son of Sulaim, so that the horseman died upon his horse,
and with his second he nailed the thigh of another to the ribs of his
animal, and with a third he shattered the sword-arm of the strongest
Sulaimite; and seeing that it was Rabyah, the men of Sulaim fled from
his archery; and he drove them back yet farther, sending his arrows
humming like Djinns behind them. And when he had thus kept them back a
good while, he turned and rode after the women again.
Then the men of Sulaim rode furiously in pursuit of him, and shot
arrows after him in vain. For though all the black horses strove until
they were sweating like well-filled water-skins in the great heat, only
Nubaishah's stallion could follow after Rabyah's gray mare; and the
gray mare's skin remained dry.
And so soon as Rabyah--after having urged on the toiling camels of
the women still faster--turned once more and laid an arrow across his
bow, the drum-beat of pursuing hoofs broke up into a sound of scraping
and of stumbling, while the men of Sulaim scattered and drew back in
dismay. And many times Rabyah thus checked them. Only Nubaishah, the
son of Habib, ever sat firm upon his black stallion and faced the
humming shaft, and dexterously avoided it or turned it from him with
marvelous surety of eye and trueness of hand.
So, fleeing and turning, halting and proceeding, pursuers and pursued
ever drew nearer to the jagged teeth of the western hills; and in the
black-toothed line of them appeared the bright gap of the Pass of
Ghazal, ever widening and brightening as they rode. And now the great
stones upon the way made long black shadows over the plain; for the sun
was setting before them. So they rode into the edge of the shadow of
the hills, and Rabyah turned to make a last stand, and the pounding of
the pursuing hoofs became a shuffling once again as the band of Sulaim
drew rein in a cloud of dust. But now in Rabyah's quiver there were no
more shafts.
Then Oumm Saiyar cried out to him from afar off: 'Sword and spear, son!
Sword and spear for the women of the Beni-Firaz! Give them sword and
spear for thy mother's sake, for thine own Raytah, who waiteth in the
tent.'
And again and again did Rabyah charge them with spear and sword,
scattering them even as a hawk scattereth quails. Only Nubaishah, the
son of Habib, fled not, but yielded way cunningly to let him pass, and
always thereafter circled menacing about him, like a vulture sweeping
close to the sand.
And it happened at last that as Rabyah bore down upon a man of Sulaim,
Nubaishah suddenly circled by him rapidly as a whirling wind, and
thrust with his lance as he whirled, and the lance-blade burst its way
through Rabyah's shirt of Persian mail and into his entrails.
And Nubaishah laughed, and drew back the blade of his wet spear between
his stallion's ears, and smelled the odor of the blood upon it, and
shouted, 'Thou hast thy death-wound, O Rabyah!' For never had swarthy
Nubaishah lifted his spear against a man to slay him and failed in his
purpose--so keen his eye, so subtle his hand.
But Rabyah, seeking to deceive him for the women's sake, shouted back
with all the deep power of his voice, 'Thou liest in thy throat,
Nubaishah!'
And Nubaishah laughed again, and shook his head in scorn, and circled
away among his men.
Then Rabyah rode after the women swiftly, sitting firm as a tower
despite his pain; and even at the Pass of Ghazal he came up with his
mother, as he had promised, and he said to her, 'O mother, give me to
drink! I have received my death-wound.'
And Oumm Saiyar looked upon the wound--a ghastly wound, that gaped even
as the mouth of a camel with divided lip.
But she was of the race of eagles, and she answered him, tearlessly,
'Nay, my son, for if I give thee to drink now thou diest, and we
would then be taken and put to shame, and while even one drop of
blood lives in thy veins, O son of mine, thy duty remains to stand in
defence of the weakness of woman and the honor of thy people. Turn
back, son of Mokaddem! Turn and smite them while thy strength lasts,
and bear the thirst for thy mother's sake; yet suffer me first to bind
up thy wound.'
And while she strove to bind it with her veil--for that was all she had
to bind it with--Rabyah murmured to her, 'O mother, the sons of Firaz
have indeed lost him they were wont to call their battle-hawk--their
deep-diving hawk of battle--him they held precious unto them as
fire-shining gold. They have lost their darling horseman, O mother!'
But Oumm Saiyar said to him, as she knotted tightly the long veil about
his wound: 'Son, are we not of mighty Thalabah's stock, and Malik's
breed, whose daily lot is bereavement? Well hath it been said that
among us no man dieth in his tent! What is the record of our race
but an outpouring of ghosts from the clash of battle, even as the
spark-flood's perpetual gush from the grinding of swords? Yet thou
knowest that blood of ours is never shed without vengeance; and when
one of us falleth, straightway another riseth up to do the deeds of a
man--to help the weak, to strive with them that are mighty for evil.
Bear thou the thirst for thy people's sake; turn now, O son, and smite
them stoutly while thy strength endures.'
And Rabyah turned back again, while the women fled; and once more he
scattered the band of Sulaim, and drove them before him, and held all
the Pass. And he sat guarding the narrow way, upon his gray mare.
Then fell and died the day, in awful passion of fire, behind the Pass,
and against the mighty glow, as in a flame, the horseman towered like a
Djinn.
And the sons of Sulaim drew afar off, and watched Rabyah--as vultures
wait and watch, pluming themselves, about the place where a lion lieth
down to die. And because they would not again attack Rabyah, Nubaishah
mocked them with rhymes piercing as the iron of lances. But they could
not be moved to approach him; and Nubaishah foamed at the mouth like a
camel that hath eaten bitter herbs.... And the night came.
But Rabyah, remaining in the shadow of the Pass, felt that his ghost
was about to depart from him. And bending to the ear of his slim gray
mare, he whispered unto her, softly, 'Stand thou still, darling; stand
still as a stone for the love of me!' Then he pressed the foot of his
long spear into the ground, even as he sat upon her, and leaned upon it.
And in the darkness his ghost went out from him.
But ever, as a king sitteth upon his throne, so Rabyah sat upon his
mare; and ever the gray mare stood still as a stone for the love of him.
Over the black desert of the sky slowly moved the long white caravan
of the stars; and the night waned. But dead Rabyah still sat upon his
mare; and the beautiful mare stood as a graven image standeth, for the
love of him.
Until the cheek of the morning reddened, as for shame; and Nubaishah
saw that Rabyah's head drooped, as though he slept upon his mare.
Then Nubaishah called unto him an archer of Khuzaah, a mighty man to
bend the bow; and he asked the archer, 'Hast thou an arrow left, my
son?'
And the man looked to where Rabyah was, and replied, fearfully, 'One
only--and it is for my life.'
But Nubaishah said: 'Thy life is safe now. Shoot the arrow, my son;
shoot at the gray mare.'
And the mare saw the arrow coming, and leaped aside; and Rabyah fell
upon his face. Then, for the first time, all the men of Sulaim knew
that he was dead; and they sent up a great shout.
And they went up to where he lay, and looked upon him, and wondered,
and they spoiled him of his helm and his broken shirt of mail, and his
lance and sword, and his sandals. But the mare had fled toward the
tents of the Beni-Firaz, and none might overtake her.
And swart Nubaishah muttered: 'There was no other like him among the
men of Firaz. I almost repent me to have slain him.'
And a wild man of Sulaim, marveling, smote the foot of his spear
into the dead man's eye, and cried aloud, in the uncouthness of his
admiration, 'God curse thee!-a man who defendeth his women even after
he is dead!'
But Oumm Saiyar and the women had reached the tents of the Beni-Firaz,
and aroused the tribe. And the best men of the camp sprung to horse in
haste, and rode fiercely to the Pass of Ghazal; but they only found
Rabyah lying there, naked and dead, and the vultures circling above
him. And leaving him there, they pursued so furiously after the sons
of Sulaim that the long way smoked beneath them; yet they could not
overtake them.
So they rode back to where Rabyah lay, and they buried him there, with
great mourning, in the place of his last and greatest deed. And they
built above him a hill of black stones to mark the spot, and in the
midst thereof, at the summit, they set up a great white stone, shaped
like the back of a camel.
And never thereafter--until the days of the Prophet--did any Arab of
any tribe pass that way who did not sacrifice a camel in honor of the
valiant one who had defended his women even after he was dead. (Except,
indeed, Hafs, son of Al-Ahnaf, who, having but one camel, could not
make the sacrifice; but he composed an immortal poem in honor of
Rabyah, and his verses are still in the mouths of the Arabian people.)
And never a son of Firaz passed that way to war who did not cry out
unto Rabyah: '_La tab'adan!_ Abide with us! Be with us this day, O
Rabyah!'
And after Islam, not less than in the Days of Ignorance, the wives of
the desert horsemen prayed they might become mothers of brave tall boys
worthy to bear Rabyah's name.
And whenever, in time of foray, or in days of ill fortune of war, or
amid the ghastly perils of desert travel, women found themselves face
to face with the fear of shame, they would cry out the name of him upon
whom no woman had ever called vainly in those wild, dark days before
Islam.
And Islam itself, spreading like a holy fire east and west, two hundred
days' journey from India to the Sea of Darkness, bore abroad his name,
and flashed it far into the black South, making it known unto the
blue-eyed Touareg, whose camels dance to the sound of music--making it
known even to those swart sultans whose domains do border upon the
unknown lakes of Afrikia.
And these are some of the verses that were composed in that long
rolling measure which is called _Kamil_, before the sepulchre of
Rabyah, by the poet Hafs, the son of Al-Ahnaf:--
Bide with us still, Rabyah, son of Mokaddem, near!
May the clouds of dawn keep green thy grave with unfailing
showers....
My camel fled when she spied the cairn on the stony waste,
Built over one who was free of hand, most quick to give.
Start not, O camel! for sure no shape to be shunned was he--
A carouser mirthful, a mighty stirrer of battle-flame.
Long is my way, and the thirsty desert before me lies,
Else here for thee she had fallen, butchered to feast thy
friends.[1]
[Footnote 1: C. J. Lyall's version, as given in his admirable
_Translations of Ancient Arabian Poetry_ (London: 1885).]