All are wrapped in slumber. The shadow stops before the tent; and now something glitters, like two sparkling stars fallen from heaven.
Perhaps they are the eyes of some savage beast prowling near the camp in search of prey.
No one sees these eyes. They are not the eyes of an animal, but of a human being who now stands upright in front of Mohammed's tent.
Sleep has waved its black pinions over Mohammed, as he lies there lost in thought; his senses have become gradually confused, and he, too, now sleeps, dreaming of the viceroy, of the morrow, and of the Mameluke bey Bardissi, whom he would so gladly call his friend.
For a moment he opens his eyes; it seems to him that he hears a noise, a slight rustling against the canvas of the tent. Yet he sees nothing, and all is still. It is only a dream. He closes his eyes, the angel of sleep fans his brow, and his head sinks back upon the mat again.
It would have been well had the sentinels stood guard. They would not have allowed this black figure to spring into the tent with the bound of a tiger, and then glide like the noiseless serpent to the mat where Mohammed slept. They could have prevented this spectre from so quickly and noiselessly binding his feet and hands with thin ropes that he did not awake, and then suddenly and rapidly enveloping his head with a thick cloth, and adroitly tying it in a knot.
The sarechsme, now aroused, raises his head to hear the words: "Fear not, your life will be spared!" murmured in his ear.
And, while these words are being whispered, he feels the cloth about his head, and that he can utter no cry or word; he also becomes aware that his hands and feet are securely bound.
"And to this I have come!" thinks he. "Thus am I to die, an object of ridicule to the world and to myself!"
And, strange to say, his thoughts suddenly revert to the past. Thus bound and gagged, had he once lain in another place. And he who perpetrated the horrible outrage, lives in splendor, and Mohammed has lived in vain, and must die unavenged! It is again Cousrouf Pacha who causes him to be bound and borne out. "Whither? whither? I ask! Do I not already know? Out to the Nile that glittered in the sunlight before me a few hours since. Oh, had I but known that it was to be my grave, and that Cousrouf had read and understood my thoughts! He felt that it was he or I, that one must go down; and now he stands secure on the heights, and I must sink down, down!"