They sang the louder in defiance of the elements.
"Lord of the desert is Ali Higg! _Akbar! Akbar!_ * Lord of the gardens of grape and fig.
_Akbar! Akbar!_ Lord of the palm and clustered date.
_Mishmish,_** olive and water sate Hunger and thirst in Ali's gate! _Akbar! Akbar! Akbar Ali Higg!_ "Lion of lions and lord of lords! _Akbar! Akbar!_ Chief of lances, prince of swords! _Akbar! Akbar!_ Red with blood is the realm he owns! Bzz-u-wzz-uzz the blood-fly drones! Crack-ak-ak-ak! The crunching bones! _Akbar! Akbar! Akbar Ali Higg!_ "Jackals feed on Ali's trail! _Akbar! Akbar!_ Speed and strength and numbers fail! _Akbar! Akbar!_ Swooping along in a cloud of sand, Killing and conquering out of hand Hasten the slayers of Ali's band! _Akbar! Akbar! Akbar Ali Higg!_ "Camel and horse and fat-tail sheep, _Akbar! Akbar!_ Ali's kite-eyed herdsmen keep! _Akbar! Akbar!_ Gold and silver and gems of the best, Amber and linen and silks attest What are the profits of Ali's quest! _Akbar! Akbar! Akbar Ali Higg!_ "Fair are the fortunes of Ali's men! _Akbar! Akbar!_ Each has slave-women eight or ten! _Akbar! Akbar!_ Ho! Where the dust of the desert swirls Over the plain as his cohort whirls, Oho! the screams of the plundered girls! _Akbar! Akbar! Akbar Ali Higg!_" -- ----------- * Akbar means "great." ** Mishmish--apricot.

In that land of drought and desolation the highest compliment you can pay a man is to call him lord of water and ripening fruit.
-- ----------- There was any amount more of it, but most of the rest was not polite enough for print, because the Arab likes to enter into details.

It sounded much better in Arabic, anyhow.

And more and more frequently as the song grew lurid and they warmed to the refrain they made their point by changing the third Akbar into Jimgrim: _"Akbar! Akbar! Jimgrim Ali Higg!"_ It suited their sense of humor finely to announce to the wind and the kites that Grim, the strict, straight, ethical American was a ravisher of virgins and a slitter of offenseless throats, who knew no mercy--a man without law in this world or prospect of peace in the next.
When we reached an oasis about noon--sweet water and thirty or forty palm-trees--and simply had to camp there because the camels were exhausted after a night and half a day of strenuous marching, they were still so full of high spirits that they had to work them off somehow; and unwittingly I provided the excuse.
I was on the lee side of a camel, opening a boil in Mujrim's leg with his razor, when I caught sight of one of the younger men trying to burgle the medicine-chest.

I yelled at him, and naturally gashed my patient's leg, who rose in giant wrath and with enormous fairness smote the real culprit.
The resulting blasphemous bad language brought Ali Baba to the scene at once as peacemaker, with all the gang behind him; and in a minute they had all joined hands, with Mahommed standing in the center, and were dancing like a lot of pouter-pigeons, singing a new song about Mujrim's leg, and a razor, and blood on the sand, and palm-trees, and a saint, and my superhuman ability to let daylight into the very heart of boils.