Kanana, a Bedouin youth, though excelling in athletic prowess, is branded, even by his father, as a coward because he prefers the humble lot of a shepherd to the warrior's career that he, the son of a sheik known as the "Terror of the Desert," was expected to follow. "Only for Ailah and Arabia will I lift a lance and take a life," he maintained.

Opportunity to prove his worth soon comes, and with remarkable endurance of peril, hardship, and thirst he carries to the great general, Kahled, word of the invasion of a mighty Greek army.

Honors are heaped upon the previously despised youth, who cares only for the fact that he has served Arabia and at last won the favor of his father.

But there is more work for him to do, and, under circumstances which try his fortitude even more severely than before, he finally throws a long lance and by the act frees Arabia. The supposed coward, understood too late, becomes in memory a national hero.

From the dust jacket of a 1920 reprint