He slipped noiselessly into the shadows and was gone. But Basha sat wakeful and watchful through the night.
With the break of day the most of the camels in the oasis rose to search for the young green growths that held the dew, but Basha sat silent.
“Fool,” cried Abd el Karim, staggering from his tent, the haschish dreams still clouding his brain; “art thou too among the sick? Shall I kill thee, or wilt thou eat, O thrice cursed beast?”
“Leave me while there is time,” growled Basha, but Abd el Karim heard no more than the usual angry gurgle, and drawing off one of his slippers he struck Basha across the mouth.
With a curious cry like a trumpet-call Basha shuffled to his feet, and Abd el Karim, realising that some awful change had come to his charge, turned and ran.
In long slanting strides, with outstretched neck, lowered head and open mouth, Basha pursued noisily. The other camels were feeding behind the palm grove, their guardians with them, Abd el Karim had run towards the desert. But the drug he favoured had made his feet unsteady; in the hour of his direst need he slipped and fell. Basha’s teeth closed on the white haik that enveloped his master, and then he came down slowly to a sitting position and thrust the man, senseless now from fright, between the smooth rock and the bony ridge of his chest.
When he rose and ran towards the open desert he was mad, doomed to run until he dropped and died. But the man he had left prone on the rock that had tripped him would never, never rise again.
Many days later, in the great fandak of the Abaradiou beyond the gates of Timbuctoo, Abdullah told his friend the slave-merchant of the journey. “We had two anxious days,” he said, “but the grace of Allah was upon all save Abd el Karim. One of the camels that had never known the desert broke down and went mad. Perhaps the man had ill-treated him, perhaps even strove to stop him. Who shall say more than that Abd el Karim’s hour had come? May Allah have pardoned him.”