When the knight recovered consciousness, he cast a wandering glance
about him, crying: “I thirst! I die! I burn!” And in his delirium,
precursor of death, from his dry lips, through which whistled the
difficult breath, came only these words of agony: “I thirst! I burn!
Water! Water!”
The Moorish girl knew that there was an opening from that vault to the
valley through which the river flows. The valley and all the heights
which overlook it were full of Moslem soldiers, who, the fortress now
surrendered, were vainly seeking everywhere the knight and his beloved
to satiate on them their thirst for destruction; yet she did not
hesitate an instant, but taking the helmet of the dying man, she slipped
like a shadow through the thicket which covered the mouth of the cave
and went down to the river bank.
Already she had dipped up the water and was rising to return to the side
of her lover, when an arrow hissed and a cry resounded.
Two Arab archers who were on watch near the fortress had drawn their
bows in the direction in which they heard the foliage rustle.
The Moor’s daughter, mortally wounded, yet succeeded in dragging herself
to the entrance of the vault and down into its depths where she joined
the knight. He, on seeing her bathed with blood and at the point of
death, recovered his reason and, realizing the enormity of the sin which
demanded so fearful an expiation, raised his eyes to heaven, took the
water which his beloved offered him and, without lifting it to his lips,
asked the Moorish girl: “Would you be a Christian? Would you die in my
faith and, if I am saved, be saved with me?” The Moor’s daughter, who
had fallen to the ground, faint with loss of blood, made a slight
movement of her head, and upon it the knight poured the baptismal water,
invoking the name of the Almighty.
The next day the soldier who had shot the arrow saw a trace of blood on
the river bank and, following it, went into the cave where he found the
dead bodies of the cavalier and his beloved, who, ever since, come out
at night to wander through these parts.