The priest gave a startled exclamation. Aylmer echoed it. Disfigured, battered, crushed as it was, they recognized the figure in the blood-stained djelab of brown.
A growing dimness was clouding Muhammed's eyes. The quick pant of his breathing weakened as they watched. But a flash of feeling illuminated the pallid features as the Moor's glance reached and dwelled upon Aylmer's face.
His lips moved.
"The child?" he asked in a faint whisper. "The Sidi Jan?"
Padre Sigismondi darted an inquiring look at his companion and then knelt beside the dying man.
"The child is well," he answered gravely. "Yourself? Is there no message to give, no delivery of your soul you wish to make? Time is short for you. Use it, and me, as you wish."
The brown eyes searched the priest's features with a queer disdain, as it seemed—or was it, perchance, compassion. The stiffening lips became more grimly resolute.
"I proclaim!" said the Moor. "I proclaim that there is One God—One God—," and passed, unfaltering, to meet Him.
For a moment there was silence. Aylmer broke it.
"Perhaps we owe him more than we think," he said slowly. "The boy? That was always his first care. Perhaps he stood between the child and harm. I believe that he would have done so in the face of the child's father himself!"