Jail, fighting, hardship, meant to them no more than temporary inconvenience.

But to have asked them to let a prisoner escape, and submit to shameful abuse for it afterward in the presence of a woman and strangers, would have been more than Arab loyalty could stand.
And, mother of me, how that woman Ayisha did revile us! If ever she had doubted we were Indians she was sure of it now.

She swept with her tongue the whole three hundred million Indians into one vile horde and de-sexed, disinherited, declassed, and damned the lot of us.

Before you think you know anything about abuse, wholesale or retail, you should hear a lady of the desert proclaim displeasure.

I wouldn't be surprised to know that the very camels blushed.
It was all Narayan Singh could stand, for Ali Baba and his gang laughed derisively, and no true son of the East can endure to be laughed at.
"Let that mother of snakes beware!" he growled in my ear; and as it turned out in the end, he did not forget the grudge he owed her.
We were off again a good hour before sundown, and Mahommed Abbas sent out a screen of camel-men to follow us for several miles.
They fired about twenty shots when we were well out of range, and boasted, as we learned afterward, of having put Ali Higg and a hundred men to rout.
But that did no harm.