The sheik was lying with his eyes shut. As Edgar approached he opened them, and the lad saw he was recognized.
"Glad am I to see you conscious again, sheik," he said, bending over him.
The sheik feebly returned the pressure of his hand.
"May Allah pour his blessings upon you!" he whispered. "I am glad that I shall lie under the sands of the desert, and not be buried like a dog in a pit with others."
"I hope that you are not going to die, sheik. You are sorely weak from loss of blood, and you are wounded in five places, but I think not at all that any of them are mortal."
"I care not to live," the sheik murmured. "Half my followers are dead. I mourn not for them; they, like myself, died in doing their duty and in fighting the Franks—but it is my boy, of whom I was so proud. I ought not to have taken him with me. Think you that I could wish to live, and go back to tell his mother that I took him to his death."
"He was not killed, sheik; we assured ourselves of that before we carried you away, and I found that, with twenty other Arabs and two or three hundred of the townsmen, he was taken prisoner to the citadel."
A look of pain passed across the sheik's face.
"Your news is not good; it is bad," he said, with more energy than he had hitherto shown. "It were better had he died in battle than be shot in cold blood. Think you that they will spare any whom they caught in arms against them?"
"My news is good, sheik," Edgar said calmly; "had it been otherwise I would have left you to think that he had died on the field of battle. I have reason to believe that Sidi has been released, and that you will soon see him."