Jimgrim and the Lost Trooper

Adventures in Araby -- what is now Palestine and Israel and Jordan and Saudi Arabia and Iraq -- with Jimgrim -- Major James Schuyler Grim -- and assorted adventurers.

You wouldn't find a tougher, less easily stampeded gang in Asia Minor than the party Grim had left with me. They spat on their cartridges and crammed them in like veteran soldiers instead of the thieves they were by trade, and each bullet was loosed on its way with an appropriate curse, until Narayan Singh on the far right laughed so that he could hardly shoot straight. And the camels went down one by one like great ships sinking, pitching up their sterns as they plunged bow first.

But that war-cry, "Allaho Akbar!" is something more than a formula. It seems to fire the men who use it with a frenzy that bullets can't quench. Camels fell, but their riders charged forward on foot, and by that time they could guess how few we were, which added confidence to fury. The amount of nickel-coated lead that a charging Arab can eat up as he comes is incredible. There isn't an animal -- not even a bear -- that can compare with him. That gang of fanatics charged home -- got right into the middle of us -- and used their knives to such effect that Ali Baba and his youngest son Mahommed were the only two who hadn't some sort of wound to show by the time we had beaten off their survivors.