But the Dead Sea was living up to its reputation, quiet, inert, like a mercury mirror for the stars--a brooding place of silence.
The Arabs' spirits rose as we chugged toward their savage hills.
They began to sing glorious songs about women and mares and camels.

Presently Anazeh improvised an epic about the night's raid, abortive though it had been.

He left out all the disappointing part.

He sang first of the three shore-dwelling fools whose boats they had stolen.

Then of the baffled rage of those same fools when they should learn their property was lost forever.