Of a sudden the sound of loud shouting broke upon his reverie.
“Oäh! Oäh! Look to thyself, son of a dog!”
He was aware of two horsemen galloping madly down upon him from a gap in the sandhills—Turkish officers of the garrison by their uniform. They were close upon him. He leapt to his feet and sprang aside just in time to save himself from being knocked down and trampled under their horses’ hoofs. He heard them laugh aloud and curse him as they sped by, blinding him for the moment in a cloud of sand.
“May their house be destroyed!” he snarled, looking after them and showing his fangs like a dog that is angry. Then he remembered the money which had been in his lap when their shouts startled him, and there was no longer any room for anger in his heart.
A wild light of hope and fear in his eyes, he flung himself full length upon the ground and fell to groping and sifting with trembling hands. But the wild rush of the horses had played the whirlwind with the sand, scattering it hither and thither and dinting it deep with hoof-prints. After many minutes of burrowing and seeking he had found only two small copper coins; and already the sun was sinking behind the city and its headland, whose shadow was within a hand’s-breadth of him. A long train of camels passed him going towards the gate, the drivers cheerful at sight of their journey’s end.
“What seekest thou, young man?” cried one of them as he passed the fisherman.
Saïd raised himself to a kneeling posture and spread his hands over his eyes.
“Away, scoffer!” he cried sternly. “Who art thou that thou shouldst question a pious man at his prayers?” Then, after an interval of meditation, he prostrated himself so that his forehead touched the sand and forthwith resumed his search, earnestly beseeching Allah to guide his fingers aright and to keep all prying strangers at a distance.
The shadow was now upon him. All the west was a blaze of red gold, so that every roof, every dome, every palm-tree upon the skyline stood outlined clear and black. It was time to give over this frantic groping and clutching which gave such meagre results. He sat up and, squatting on his heels, began a more orderly and less haphazard search, taking one handful of sand at a time, sifting it between his fingers and laying it on one side upon a heap. After more than an hour’s experience of this process he had recovered some twenty small coins, amounting perhaps to a fifth part of the sum he had lost.
Night fell: the stars shone out, blackening the bulk of the dead ass, a few paces distant, which the dogs, reinforced by stray comrades from the city, were beginning to worry anew. The ripples, breaking in luminous foam upon the beach, murmured sadly in his ears. Hunger began to get hold of him. Hasneh would be wondering what had happened, and that savoury mess of lentils and oil would be baked to a cinder. Why should he not go home, eat and drink, and return to his search later on? It was not likely that the sand would be again disturbed that night. He could come back early in the morning and collect the rest of his scattered fortune. His basket would mark the exact spot.
So thinking, he rose and went homewards. A faint light streamed from the door and window of his dwelling. Hasneh was in there with the lentils. His heart warmed at the thought, making the neighbouring void colder and more empty by contrast. As he drew near to the house a sound of wailing grew in his ears—such wailing as he had heard at funerals of the rich, where mourners were well paid for it.
His first thought was of the lentils, that they were spoilt. His next, not without relief, that someone was dead within the house. But there was no one to die except Hasneh herself, and she it was who was wailing, as he had sometimes heard her scold, in a shrill cadence. His desire to learn the truth lent wings to his feet. In a few long strides he gained the threshold.
His woman lay stretched upon the floor within—a heap of clothes from which those ghastly moans and howls proceeded, mingled with curses on some unknown being of the male sex. For a moment Saïd stood frozen in the doorway. Then the sight of something black and shrivelled in a pan upon the brazier sent angry blood coursing through every vein in his body. That something had once been a savoury mess of lentils baked in oil, the lust of which had drawn him from his search among the sand. He sprang to a corner of the room, seized a great staff which leaned against the wall, and fell to belabouring the woman with all the strength of his arm. Her droning wail changed all at once to a lively shriek. She leapt to her feet and closed with him, trying vainly to wrest the stick from his hand.
“May Allah cut short thy life!” she cried. “What have I done to deserve this of thee?”
“The lentils are spoilt!” retorted Saïd, furiously, wrenching his arm free of her and bringing the stick down heavily on her back. “May thy house be destroyed!”
“Madman!” she screamed. “Thou speakest of lentils when an enemy has robbed thee, ruined thee! Look!”
She pointed to a hole in the floor which had been hidden by her body when Saïd entered. Little mounds of fresh sand on the brink of it showed that hands had
