"Give me a heavier one!" he exclaimed. "Do you think me like your Greek boys, made of wax? Give me a lance that, when it strikes, will kill."
They gave him a heavier lance.
"The hand-rest is too small for a Bedouin," he muttered, grasping it; "but wait! I can remedy that myself. Come. Let us have it over with."
As he spoke he tore a strip from beneath his coat, and, turning sharply about, walked before them to the brink of the cliff, winding the strip firmly about the hand-rest of the lance.
Upon the very edge he stood erect and waited.
The sun rose out of the plain, and flashed with blinding force upon the Bedouin boy, clad in his sheepskin coat and desert turban, precisely as it had found him in the porch of Aaron's tomb, upon the summit of Mount Hor.
His hand no longer held a shepherd's staff, but firmly grasped a Grecian lance, that gleamed and flashed as fiercely as the sun.
Upon Mount Hor he was bending forward, eagerly shading his eyes, anxiously looking away into the dim distance, searching the path of his destiny.
Now there was no eagerness. Calmly he stood there. Vainly the sun flashed in his clear, wide-open eyes. He did not even know that it was shining.
Not a muscle moved. Why was he waiting?