"The words that you have spoken," said Daud, quickly, "are wise and just. Yet no man can assert that the dead have a claim on the goods of this world."
"I do not understand you," said I, "I was speaking of the living."
"Then," said Daud, "you know not that that Ingleezee is dead?"
"Dead!" I replied in astonishment, "why should you think that he has died?"
"Because," answered the Bedouin, "I myself saw him lying dead in the hospital at Hillah. I happened to have been in the town in disguise, when my nephew, who sweeps out the hospital for the base-born Turks, informed me of the death of a strange Ingleezee who had come from the desert. He took me to see the dead man, and I saw that it was none other than that same man who had brought ruin to my people. I had sworn to kill him, but of that I have told you. No knife of mine was needed to avenge the death of my many relations. It had pleased Allah to strike him."
It seemed to me a dreadful thing that Kellner, of whom, as my cabin-companion, I had the most pleasant recollections, should have thus come to an untimely end, regarded probably by those about him in his last moments as an outcast, if not also as a felon. But his death had changed the whole situation; and though I did not immediately take it all in, my more astute friends saw at once how matters lay.
"There is only one thing to be done," said Faris, breaking the silence, "and I am sure that my guest here will agree with me. Come, Daud, do you understand my meaning?"
"That, sheik, I cannot say," replied Daud, "but I have my own idea of the only plan by which we can succeed. It is that we immediately seek the Jews, and discover from them truly what they have done with the Girdle."
"And after that?" said Faris.
"With spear and sword and with horse," answered Daud, his eyes flashing fiercely, "pursuing to the limits of the earth, and sparing no one, until we have accomplished our end."