"Base, pitiful wretches," he cried in anger, "it well becomes your cowardly nature thus to insult in death, the man you dared not look on in life. Aye, quench your valour on that unconscious body, for those weapons are unworthy of warring against the living, which cannot respect the dead. Avaunt, miscreants! tempt no further my just anger."
The affrighted crew shrunk back in confusion, but one more daring than the rest ventured to exclaim—
"He was the mortal foe of the Moors, and of El Feri de Benastepar——"
"In life he was," sternly replied El Feri; "but death reconciles the bitterest enemy—for enmity must lose its fire in the cold precincts of the grave."
"The Moor and the Christian," retorted gruffly the other, "even in death, must be irreconcileable; even in the frost of the sepulchre, the hate of such foes must not be extinguished.
"Cease, miscreant!" fiercely returned El Feri, "or by the mighty Allah, a single word more, and a blow from the scymitar of El Feri shall be thy only answer."
In speechless terror they all retreated, when El Feri turning to one of his followers—
"Do you, Moraz," said he, "and some of your brave companions, pay the last honors to the noble Don Alonso de Aguilar."
The Moors obeyed the orders of their chief, and forthwith a grave was dug at the foot of the rock. No funeral pomp—no military honors graced the obsequies of the great Aguilar—no chaunting priest was there to rehearse the service of the dead—no friend to weep over his loss—no grateful dependant to raise the closed hands in prayer to heaven; but in silence his enemies laid him in his humble grave, and strewed the earth over his warlike form. What, though no sculptured marble was there to point out the noble dust that lay beneath; the name of the warrior will live in the hearts of his countrymen, and will be handed to posterity as long as the records of Spain shall exist. But, in the absence of the pomp which marks the burial of the illustrious, Don Alonso received the most honorable tribute that can adorn a warrior's grave—the manly and venerating tear of his mortal foe; for, as the earth covered for ever the remains of Aguilar, the silent tear of noble feeling fell on it from the eye of El Feri de Benastepar.
Meantime the Christians at the foot of the mountain were making a precipitate retreat, carrying with them a number of their wounded companions, and leaving behind a terrible monument of their bravery and misfortune.