With no other guide than the sun by day, and by night the host of stars,
the two captains soon lost sight of each other, and all the sooner, as
Fadrique avoided intentionally the object of his aversion. Heimbert, on
the other hand, had no thought but the attainment of his aim; and, full
of joyful confidence in God’s assistance, he pursued his course in a
southerly direction.
Many nights and many days had passed, when one evening, as the twilight
was coming on, Heimbert was standing alone in the endless desert, unable
to descry a single object all round on which his eye could rest. His
light flask was empty, and the evening brought with it, instead or
the hoped-for coolness, a suffocating whirlwind of sand, so that the
exhausted wanderer was obliged to press his burning face to the burning
soil in order to escape in some measure the fatal cloud. Now and then he
heard something passing him, or rustling over him as with the sound of
a sweeping mantle, and he would raise himself in anxious haste; but he
only saw what he had already too often seen in the daytime--the wild
beasts of the wilderness roaming at liberty through the desert
waste. Sometimes it was an ugly camel, then it was a long-necked and
disproportioned giraffe, and then again a long-legged ostrich hastening
away with its wings outspread. They all appeared to scorn him, and he
had already taken his resolve to open his eyes no more, and to give
himself up to his fate, without allowing these horrible and strange
creatures to disturb his mind in the hour of death.
Presently it seemed to him as if he heard the hoofs and neighing of a
horse, and suddenly something halted close beside him, and he thought he
caught the sound of a man’s voice. Half unwilling, he could not resist
raising himself wearily, and he saw before him a rider in an Arab’s
dress mounted on a slender Arabian horse. Overcome with joy at finding
himself within reach of human help, he exclaimed, “Welcome, oh, man,
in this fearful solitude! If thou canst, succor me, thy fellow-man, who
must otherwise perish with thirst!” Then remembering that the tones
of his dear German mother tongue were not intelligible in this joyless
region, he repeated the same words in the mixed dialect, generally
called the Lingua Romana, universally used by heathens, Mohammedans, and
Christians in those parts of the world where they have most intercourse
with each other.
The Arab still remained silent, and looked as if scornfully laughing at
his strange discovery. At length he replied, in the same dialect, “I was
also in Barbarossa’s fight; and if, Sir Knight, our overthrow bitterly
enraged me then, I find no small compensation for it in the fact of
seeing one of the conquerors lying so pitifully before me.” “Pitifully!”
exclaimed Heimbert angrily, and his wounded sense of honor giving him
back for a moment all his strength, he seized his sword and stood ready
for an encounter. “Oho!” laughed the Arab, “does the Christian viper
still hiss so strongly? Then it only behooves me to put spurs to my
horse and leave thee to perish here, thou lost creeping worm!” “Ride
to the devil, thou dog of a heathen!” retorted Heimbert; “rather than
entreat a crumb of thee I will die here, unless the good God sends me
manna in the wilderness.”
And the Arab spurred forward his swift steed and galloped away a couple
of hundred paces, laughing with scorn. Then he paused, and looking round
to Heimbert he trotted back and said, “Thou seemest too good, methinks,
to perish here of hunger and thirst. Beware! my good sabre shall touch
thee.”
Heimbert, who had again stretched himself hopelessly on the burning
sand, was quickly roused to his feet by these words, and seized his
sword; and sudden as was the spring with which the Arab’s horse flew
toward him, the stout German warrior stood ready to parry the blow,
and the thrust which the Arab aimed at him in the Mohammedan manner he
warded off with certainty and skill.
Again and again the Arab sprung; similarly here and there, vainly hoping
to give his antagonist a death-blow. At last, overcome by impatience, he
approached so boldly that Heimbert, warding off the threatening
weapon, had time to seize the Arab by the girdle and drag him from the
fast-galloping horse. The violence of the movement threw Heimbert also
on the ground, but he lay above his opponent, and holding close before
his eyes a dagger, which he had dexterously drawn from his girdle, he
exclaimed, “Wilt thou have mercy or death?” The Arab, trembling, cast
down his eyes before the gleaming and murderous weapon, and said, “Show
mercy to me, mighty warrior; I surrender to thee.” Heimbert then ordered
him to throw away the sabre he still held in his right hand. He did so,
and both combatants rose, and again sunk down upon the sand, for the
victor was far more weary than the vanquished.
The Arab’s good horse meanwhile had trotted toward them, according to
the habit of those noble animals, who never forsake their fallen master.
It now stood behind the two men, stretching out its long slender neck
affectionately toward them. “Arab,” said Heimbert with exhausted voice,
“take from thy horse what provision thou hast with thee and place it
before me.” The vanquished man humbly did as he was commanded, now
just as much submitting to the will of the conqueror as he had before
exhibited his animosity in anger and revenge. After a few draughts
of palm-wine from the skin, Heimbert looked at the youth under a new
aspect; he then partook of some fruits, drank more of the palm-wine,
and at length said, “You are going to ride still farther to-night, young
man?” “Yes, indeed,” replied the Arab sadly; “on a distant oasis there
dwells my aged father and my blooming bride. Now--even if you set me at
full liberty--I must perish in the heat of this barren desert, for want
of sustenance, before I can reach my lovely home.”
“Is it, perhaps,” asked Heimbert, “the oasis on which the mighty
enchantress, Zelinda, dwells?”
“Allah protect me!” cried the Arab, clasping his hands. “Zelinda’s
wondrous isle offers no hospitable shelter to any but magicians. It lies
far away in the scorching south, while our friendly oasis is toward the
cooler west.”
“I only asked in case we might be travelling companions,” said
Heimbert courteously. “If that cannot be, we must certainly divide the
provisions; for I would not have so brave a warrior as you perish, with
hunger and thirst.”
So saying, the young captain began to arrange the provisions in two
portions, placing the larger on his left and the smaller at his
right; he then desired the Arab to take the former, and added, to his
astonished companion, “See, good sir, I have either not much farther
to travel or I shall perish in the desert; I feel that it will be so.
Besides, I cannot carry half so much on foot as you can on horse-back.”
“Knight! victorious knight!” cried the amazed Mussulman, “am I then to
keep my horse?”
“It were a sin and shame indeed,” said Heimbert, smiling, “to separate
such a faithful steed from such a skilful rider. Ride on, in God’s name,
and get safely to your people.”
He then helped him to mount, and the Arab was on the point of uttering a
few words of gratitude, when he suddenly exclaimed, “The magic maiden!”
and, swift as the wind, he flew over the dusty plain. Heimbert, however,
turning round, saw close beside him in the now bright moonlight a
shining figure, which he at once perceived to be Zelinda.