"WE COULD SEE BELOW US ... THE FIGURE OF A MAN LYING ACROSS THE GUNWALE"
"See that he does not escape," shouted Edwards. "He may not be dead."
Quick as thought, Sedjur ran to where his own kufa was fastened, jumped down into it, and soon brought it alongside the other one. Faris and I then assisted to drag the man up and lay him on the ground, while Edwards obtained a lamp from indoors, and made an examination. The man was dead, his skull having been crushed and his neck broken. Death, Edwards declared, must have been instantaneous; and, with some excitement, he told us what had taken place. Feeling faint, he had walked out into the courtyard, and was sitting on one of the seats in the fresh air, when he suddenly saw a figure climb stealthily over the wall from the direction of the river, and creep towards the room where we were seated. Thinking that something was wrong, Edwards rushed across to the intruder, but the man was too quick for him, and fled back to the river-side. Edwards, however, shouting for help, succeeded in cutting him off, and was able to seize, for a second, the end of his cloak as the man leapt over the wall into the river. Whether the fugitive knew that his kufa was immediately below him, and had intended to jump into it, no one can say; but it was evident that the effect of Edwards's temporary hold on his cloak was to throw him off his balance, so that he pitched headlong into the bottom of the boat from a height of some fifteen feet or more.
Holding the lamp to the dead man's face, we sought to identify him, and Faris instantly uttered an exclamation of surprise.
"Wallah!" said he, "it is Shustri, the astrologer."
"Wallah!" exclaimed Sedjur, "and he told Daud that he was going to Damascus."
"Without a doubt," said Faris, "he had come here to steal the Serpent Belt; but death overtakes even a man who knows all things, and who can converse with the dead."
There were already signs of day, and Faris was anxious to depart.
"Twere better," said he "that this man's body should not remain here; for if it became known that such an one had perished in this place, then would it have an evil reputation for all time. We will therefore take the body and the kufa a little way with us, and let them float away in mid-stream, until, if Allah wills, they reach the great Shattu'l Arab."
None of us dissented, and within a few minutes we had grasped the hands of our Bedouin friends, and had seen them drop down into their kufa. Then we lowered the body of the Hindu into the other boat, and Sedjur, casting loose its rope, towed it astern, while Faris paddled away from land. We stood watching the two black specks moving across the water, until, in the growing daylight, we saw them part, the one slowly ascending the river, and the other, caught by the current, sweeping down stream, out of sight.