The long-drawn-out notes vibrated mournfully in the night air.
Sadly the singer put his hand to one side of his head, bending as if he were wailing.
The quaint, imaginative song-story throbbed through many phases and incidents, and every now and again the motionless figures round the red embers wailed in sympathy.
At last came the end, a happy climax, no less loved by these simple children of the desert than by the European novel reader.
... So that I was in the hospital and had become most seriously ill.
But swifter than the gazelle, the light of my life came near the hospital.
And called in at the window, "Ibrahim! my eye! my heart!"
And full of joy I carried her about the camp, and presented her to all my superiors, leaving out none, from the colonel down to the sergeant.
I received my dismissal, to return to Galiub and to marry.
Old Abdehei was awaiting us, to bless us. God be praised!
So sang Ibrahim, the converted Christian, the Moslem songs of his youth; for here, in El Makhna, the plain of Shechem, there were no missionaries with their cold reproof and little hymns in simple couplets.
The fire died away, and they slept until dawn flooded the plain.
When, on the next day, the sun was waning, though still high in the western heavens, the travellers came within view of the ancient city of Nabulûs.
There was a great tumult of excitement in Spence's pulses as he saw the city, radiant in the long afternoon lights, and far away.
Here, in the confines of this distant glittering town, lay the last link in the terrible secret which he was to solve.