"In his eyes a serf has no more soul than a beast of burden!" repeated the quarryman. "Yes, this man speaks in the sincerity of his savage pride. He weeps for his own child. After all he is human. And yet, what is a serf to him? An animal without heart, reason or feeling! But why should I wonder? Neroweg cannot choose but share with his likes that opinion of our animal abjectness. Our craven attitude confirms it. Our conquerors are thousands, while we, the conquered, number millions, and yet we patiently bear the yoke. Indeed, never did more docile cattle march under the whip of a master, or stretch the neck to the butcher's knife!" After a moment's silence, Fergan resumed: "Listen, Neroweg! You are in my power, disarmed and fettered. I am about to fulfil a great act of justice by braining you with my cudgel like a wolf caught in a trap. It is the death that you deserve. Had I a sword, I would not use it on you. But what you have just said has made me think and somewhat spoils my pleasure. I admit it; by reason of our brutishness and cowardice, we deserve to be looked upon and treated like cattle by you, our seigneurs. 'Tis true, we are as craven as you are ferocious, but if our cravenness explains your criminal conduct, it does not excuse it. So, you shall die, Neroweg! Yes, in the name of the horrid ills that your race has made mine suffer, you shall die! I only wish to keep a memento of you, a descendant of the Nerowegs," and Fergan leaned forward over the seigneur of Plouernel. The latter, believing his last hour had come, could not restrain a cry of anguish. But the serf only pulled from Neroweg's robe one of the shells that it was sprinkled with, as symbols of a pious pilgrimage. For an instant Fergan contemplated the shell with a pensive mien. Joan and her son, following with astonished and uneasy looks the movements of the quarryman, saw him raise his ragged kilt, that only half-covered his thighs, and detach a long belt of coarse cloth that was wound around his waist. Inside the belt the quarryman carried several pious mementos, that had been handed down from generation to generation in his family, and which, before finally marching away with the troop of the Crusaders, he had taken with him. To them he added the shell he had just pulled from the robe of Neroweg VI. Refastening his belt, the serf cried out: "And now, justice and vengeance, Neroweg! I have accused you, judged and condemned you. You shall now die!" Looking around for his heavy and knotted staff, he grasped the massive implement with both his powerful hands, while his wife and child implored aloud: "Mercy!" The serf, however, throwing himself upon the seigneur of Plouernel planted one foot on the latter's breast: "No, no mercy! Did the Nerowegs know mercy for my grandfather, for Bezenecq the Rich, or for his daughter?" Saying which, the quarryman raised the cudgel over the head of Neroweg, Worse than a Wolf, who, gnashing his teeth, faced death without blanching. It would have been over then and there with the seigneur of Plouernel had not Joan embraced the knees of her husband, imploring him aloud: "For the love of your son, have mercy! Without the water that you took from this seigneur, Colombaik would have expired in the desert!"
Fergan yielded to the prayers of his wife. Despite the justice of the reprisal, it went against his nature to kill an unarmed enemy. He threw his staff far away; remained for an instant gloomy and silent and then said to his seigneur: "It is said that despite your crimes, you and your likes at times remain true to your vows. Swear to me, by the salvation of your soul and by your faith as a knight, to respect from this moment the life of my wife, of my child and of myself. I do not fear you so long as we are alone in this desert, but if I meet you at Marhala or Jerusalem with the other seigneurs of the Crusade, I and mine will be at your mercy. You could order us burned or hanged. Swear that you will respect our lives, I shall then have mercy upon you, and set you free."
"An oath to you, vile serf! To soil my word by passing it to you!" cried out Neroweg, and he added with another outburst of sardonic laughter: "As well might I give my word as a Catholic and a knight to the ass or any other beast of burden!"
"This is too much!" yelled Fergan exasperated, while he ran to pick up his club. "By the bones of my father, you shall die!"
At the very moment, however, when the serf had anew seized the cudgel, Joan, clinging to his arm said with terror: "Do you hear yonder growing noise?... It approaches.... It rumbles like thunder!"
"Father," cried out Colombaik, no less horrified than his mother, "look yonder! The sky is red as blood!"
The serf raised his eyes, and, struck with the strange and startling spectacle, forgot all about Neroweg. The orb of the sun, already near the horizon, seemed enormous and of purple hue. Its rays disappeared at intervals in the midst of a burning mist which it lighted with a dull fire, and whose reflection suddenly crimsoned the desert and the air. The frightful spectacle seemed to be seen through some transparent glass tinted with a coppery red. A furious gale, still distant, swept over the desert and carried with its dull and prolonged moanings a breath as scorching as the exhalations of a furnace. Flocks of vultures fled at full tilt before the approaching hurricane, scurrying over the ground or dropping down motionless, palpitating, or uttering plaintive squeaks. Suddenly the sun, ever more completely eclipsed, disappeared behind an immense cloud of reddish sand that veiled the desert and the sky, and that advanced with the swiftness of lightning, chasing before it the jackals and the lions, that roared with fear, and rushed by, terror-stricken, a few steps from Fergan and his family.
"We are lost! This is a sand-spout!" cried out the quarryman.
Hardly had the serf uttered these words of despair when he found himself enveloped by a sand cloud as fine as ashes, and dense as a fog. The mobile soil, hollowed, thrown up and up-turned by the irresistible force of the sand-spout, opened at the feet of Fergan, who, with wife and child, disappeared under a sand wave. The gale furrowed, beat about and tossed up the sands of the desert as a tempest furrows, beats about, and tosses up the waters of the ocean.