Again came the plaintive cry of the wandering jackal.
"For thy sake!" faintly repeated Timokles.
A few minutes passed, and once more the jackal's inarticulate voice wailed through the desert, but Timokles had fallen, helpless. A man sprang forward, and the lash fell again and again on Timokles' prostrate body, but the boy did not stir.
"Now see how the Christian would die in the desert, and cheat us of all the work he might do!" grumbled the vexed voice of a dismounted camel-rider. "He is young. There are many years of work in him!"
"Leave him!" scornfully advised another, who held a torch. "Some beast will find him."
"Nay, but he shall go with me to Carthage," asserted a third, from the height of his camel's back. "Carthage knoweth what to do with Christians!"
"Who art thou that thou shouldest own the Christian?" demanded the first, angrily gazing up at the presumptuous rider. "Did I not find him?"
The mounted camel-rider laughed, and tossed something toward the irate speaker. The man caught the object, a ring of gold, containing a scarabaeus.
"Take it," said the giver to the appeased rival. "The Christian is mine."
The unconscious Timokles was taken up at a sign from the camel-rider to one of his servants, and the cavalcade proceeded on its way. As his camel paced forward, Pentaur, the purchaser, glanced back twice or thrice.