"It is not for Hassan that I care to search," said Ali, "but for my dagger with the jewel-studded hilt which the robber has carried away. Let me but recover my dagger, and you may do what you will with the thief."
Again the party proceeded onwards, this time towards the place from which the horse's neigh had sounded. Robin's temples ached, he was almost exhausted, yet he went on. The moon was just showing her silver horn over the waste, and Robin was feeling that he could hold out no longer, when one of the attendants exclaimed, pointing with his spear:
"There—there! I see some one lying on the sand!"
The party rode in the direction indicated, and ere they reached the spot, recognised the red fez and the silken cloak which had been worn by Hassan. The Persian was lying where he had fallen when unseated by Firdosi's sudden plunge—for the Amir's guess had been correct—Hassan had been thrown from the horse. The miserable man, who was of full habit and heavy, had been flung to the ground with such violence that he had broken his spine. Hassan was utterly unable to rise, or even to move; he could only groan in helpless agony on the ground where he lay.
That expression of intense pain made the young Knight of St. John almost forget his own. Robin managed, he knew not how, to throw himself from his saddle and reach the miserable Persian.
"Forgot were hatred, wrongs and fears;
The plaintive voice alone he hears,
But sees the dying man."
Whilst others were stripping the robber and traitor of the jewels which he had carried away, Robin, kneeling on the sand, was attempting to raise Hassan's head to enable him to breathe more freely, but even the attempt increased the sufferer's pain. Robin's own face looked so ghastly pale, that at a sign from Ali, one of the Persians brought to the youth a flask of water, which the man had taken the precaution of slinging from his saddle-bow.
Robin took the flask readily, but he did not raise it to his own parched lips; the drops fell into the gasping mouth of the dying Hassan, and then the would-be murderer expired, with the hand of one whom he had sought to destroy, supporting his head.
[CHAPTER XVII.]
ON AGAIN.