After the Arabs had attended to the camels, they sank down, dead tired from the fight with the whirlwind, and slept like logs. The fires went out, and it was pitch dark in the cave. Soon the sleepers began to snore, and outside was heard the pattering of the rain and the rushing of the water as it broke against the stones on the bed of the ravine. And so the night passed.
Before morning Stasch was so cold that he awakened from his sound sleep. It seems that the water, which had collected above them in the crevices of the rock, began to trickle drop by drop through a crack in the hollow of the cave. The boy sat up on the cloth rug, so sleepy at first that he could not tell where he was and what was happening to him. But he was soon wide awake.
“Ah!” he thought. “Yesterday there was a hurricane and we were carried off by it, and this is the cave where we took refuge from the rain.”
He began to look around. At first he was surprised to see that the rain had ceased, and that it was no longer dark in the cave, for the moon, which was now low down near the horizon, about to set, illumined it. The entire interior of the broad but shallow niche could be plainly seen. Stasch distinctly noted the Arabs lying together, and close to the largest wall of the cave he saw the white dress of Nell, who was sleeping next to Dinah.
He felt exceedingly anxious about her.
“Sleep, Nell, sleep!” he said to himself. “But I can not sleep—I must, I must save her!”
Then, looking at the Arabs, he added: “Ah, I would like to——”
Suddenly he trembled, for his eye lighted upon the leather case containing the gun he had received at Christmas, and alongside of it the cartridges lay, so near—between him and Chamis—that he had but to stretch forth his hand to reach them.
His heart began to beat and to thump like a hammer. If he could but catch hold of the gun and the cartridges he would doubtless have command of the situation. In this case he would only have to creep quietly out of the niche, secrete himself a short distance away, between the rocks, and guard the entrance from that position. “When the Sudanese and the Bedouins awake,” thought he, “they will notice that I have escaped, and all will rush out of the cave at once; then with two bullets I can shoot down the first two, and before the others reach me the gun will be reloaded. Chamis will be the only one left, but I will make short work of him.”
Then he imagined the four dead bodies bathed in blood, and his heart was filled with horror and fright. To murder four people! It is true they are villains, but just the same, it is terrible! He remembered that in Port Said he had seen a fellah, a workman, who had been killed by the handle of a shaft-sinking machine, and what a terrible impression the quivering remains amid a pool of blood had made upon him. The very thought of it caused him to shudder. And now he was about to kill four! Sin, horror! No! no! He could not do it!