I shall ride on it to where the Lion of Petra waits.

Who dares interfere with me or follow?
Let him name himself! Who dares ?" Her savagery fed itself on threats, and increased as she felt herself grow mistress of the situation.

Partly the primitive love of power, partly the animal instinct to subject and oppress--pride on top of that, and something of her sex, too, glorying in giving orders to the self-styled sterner members--drove her to increasing frenzy.
And it was not fear alone that impressed the crowd and impelled it to obedience, for those highland Bedouins are, after all, too practical for that.

We were but nine all told, to their seven or eight score, and they might have enforced the logic of that first, and left the threatened consequences for afterward, but for the appeal of the spectacular.
It bewildered them to be harangued confidently by a woman--they who were used to watching women carry loads.

There was something revolutionary about it that took their breath away, and swept their own determination into limbo.
As always, the men in the background, who felt they could avoid recognition, were the only ones who ventured to raise objection.
One or two of them started to laugh, that being the best answer all the world over to any threat, and if the laugh had spread that would likely have been the end of us.