“His Eyes,” who watched, turned and tapped a message upon his blind friend’s arm.
“To the kennels?” answered Yussuf. “Yea, verily will we hasten whilst our brothers and sisters gossip of the flight. Zarah the Merciful will have no time in which to spy the swiftest dromedary in Arabia hidden behind the rocks.” He raised his right hand as he spoke. “By the honour of the Arab, when I have finished with her who plucked the light from my eyes, behold will her laughter be ‘as the laughter of the nut when cracked between two stones’!”
He laughed savagely as he quoted the proverb, staring down at the boy he could not see, then took his hand and, without faltering, passed quickly along a path he had made for himself between the rocks up to the kennels, deserted for the moment by the grooms, who had rushed to talk over the doings of the past hour with the distracted grooms of the stables.
“Allah keep her tongue still!” whispered Yussuf as “His Eyes” opened the door of the isolated kennel amongst the rocks and softly whistled the bitch. Whimpering with delight, the beautiful creature flung herself upon the men whom she had so often followed across the desert. She loved them. They had petted her when in disgrace, and had fed her with bones between the regulation and none too satisfying meals. Yussuf’s hour of revenge had struck. Vengeance for the loss of his eyes, for the mutilation of his once handsome face, for the humiliations which had deftly been heaped upon him throughout the years by the woman who had failed to recognize the intensity of his hate for her.
For just such a moment had he longed and prayed, for just such a moment had he fostered the hate of the bitch, who, only on account of her unblemished pedigree and for the gentleness of her ways to all but the Arabian, had not been destroyed long since. For years she had followed the scent of one of the Arabian’s discarded sandals which “His Eyes” had trailed upon a string across the desert, mile upon mile, to be rewarded at the end by some dainty fastened to a staff, thrust into the sand, for which she had been taught to leap and fight.
She knew the way down the narrow path to the spear stuck fast between the two rocks, and had never forgotten the severe lessons which had taught her to keep silent until well out in the desert; she whimpered softly and thrust her muzzle into Yussuf’s hand as he passed quickly to the rock which marked the beginning of the path leading up to the cleft.
“They gamble, thou sayest, ‘Mine Eyes,’ seated upon the ground, with the Lion, a prisoner, in their midst. Then bending low will we make our way to the cleft, praying to Allah to bind their eyes to the dice until we can be no longer seen. How light is it? As light as the feathers upon a pigeon’s breast? Then must we hasten!”
Bent double, they crept up the steep path to the cleft, through which Yussuf passed, just as the first sunbeam shot from behind the edge of the world, and a great shout rang out from the plateau.
Al-Asad, chafing against the restraint put upon him and longing for the woman he loved, turned to look up at the cleft through which she must pass upon her return.