The goat-skin water-bags were newly patched and moist; the gear was all in good shape, none new, but all well-tested; and there was food enough in double sacks for twenty men for a month.

Mujrim, Ali Baba's giant oldest son, picked up the loads and turned them over for Grim to examine with about as much apparent effort as if he were tossing pillows.
Presently Grim laughed again, and looked at the line of fifteen other sons and grandsons, all squatting in the shadow of the wall watching us.
"Which is the chief Lothario ?" he asked; only he used a much more expressive word than that, because the East is frank where the West deals in innuendo, and vice versa.
"They are all grown men," said Ali Baba.

"There's a woman named Ayisha--a Badawi (Bedouin)--who has lately come from El-Maan with a caravan of wheat merchants." "How did you know that, Jimgrim ?" "I'm told she has been buying things in the _suk_* that no Badawi could have use for, and has sent to Jerusalem for goods that could not be obtained here.

I want to speak with her.

Has any of your"-- he smiled at the line of placidly contented sons again--"fathers of immorality made her acquaintance by some chance ?" [* Bazaar] Every one of the sixteen sons instantly assumed an expression of far-away meditation.