'Will you tell him,' said Holcroft, 'that, if he expects a ransom from me, I have neither a friend nor a farthing in the world.'
Allan did so.
'Liar! may God burn thee!' exclaimed Zeid, as he thought of the diamonds, and, acting in obedience to a sign from him, Abdallah, unknown to Holcroft, was stealing behind him, armed with a heavy and deeply curved Damascus sabre of the keenest edge.
There was a flash in the sunshine as the blade was swept round by a swift back-handed stroke, and the head of the miserable Hawke Holcroft rolled along the ground, as his body fell prostrate on it in a heap, with the red blood welling out from every vein and artery of the neck.
'He has met his kismet,' said Zeid, complacently.
At this sudden catastrophe, Allan turned away horrified—utterly appalled. He had seen men wounded in every way, and mutilated too by shot and shell, but had never seen aught like this—and in cold blood, too!
'He believed neither in the Prophet nor in Christ,' said Zeid, complacently; 'now that he is in hell, that cemetery for lost souls, he may learn the truth.'
And, torn from the pocket of the wretched creature's tattered surtout, the fatal diamonds were placed in the hands of Zeid-el-Ourdeh.
Allan, as he saw them sparkling in the sunshine, thought of all he heard his father say of them, and marvelled to whom they would bring evil next. If to the sheikh, he was fated never to know.
It was some time before he recovered the shock this scene gave him, but it rendered his desire to be gone—to be free—irrepressible; yet he dreaded just then to approach the subject with Zeid. Whether it was the excitement of a blood-shedding or acquisition of the diamonds, or both together, Zeid was in high good humour, and about noon gave Allan a dinner unusually sumptuous in his own tent.