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 Allah and Arabia will I lift a lance and take a life," he maintained. Opportunity to prove his worth soon comes, and the supposed coward, understood too late, becomes in memory a national hero.