“Allah! Perhaps he will back out!”
“He will not move out of the way.”
There was a dead silence. Not a sound could be heard except the snorting of the horses and the rapid breathing of the party.
“Loose Kali from the rope,” suddenly said Chamis to Gebhr, “and we will escape on the horses; then the lion will catch him first, and he will be the only one slain.”
“Yes, yes, do so!” replied the Bedouins.
But Gebhr thought Kali would immediately climb up the side of the cliff, while the lion would make a bee-line for the horses. With this in his mind another idea, still more terrible, flashed upon him. He would kill the slave and throw him behind him—then if the beast were to follow them he would see the bloody body lying on the ground and stop to devour it.
So he drew Kali by the rope nearer to his saddle, and had already raised his knife—when Stasch caught hold of him by his wide sleeve:
“Villain, what are you doing?”
Gebhr tried to tear himself loose, and if the boy had caught hold of the arm itself he would have been shaken off at once, but as he had hold of the sleeve, it was not so easy, and while Gebhr tried to tear himself loose he gesticulated and cried in a voice thick with rage:
“Dog, if that one is not sufficient, I will stab you, too. Allah! I will stab you, stab you!”