Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 3.djvu/289

265 unload the mules and pitch the tent; so they did his bidding and abode there till the middle of the night, when the youth went out to do an occasion and seeing something gleaming afar off, said to Kemaleddin, ‘O captain, what is yonder glittering?’ The muleteer sat up and considering it straitly, knew it for the glint of spear-heads and Bedouin swords and harness. Now this was a troop of Bedouins under a chief called Ajlan Abou Naïb, Sheikh of the Arabs, and when they neared the camp and saw the baggage, they said, one to another, ‘O night of booty!’ Quoth Kemaleddin, ‘Avaunt, O meanest of Arabs!’ But Abou Naïb smote him with his javelin in the breast, that the point came out gleaming from his back, and he fell down dead at the tent-door. Then cried the water-carrier, ‘Avaunt, O foulest of Arabs!’ and one of them smote him with a sword upon the shoulder, that it issued shining from the tendons of the throat and he also fell slain. Then the Bedouins fell upon the caravan from all sides and slew the whole company except Alaeddin, after which they loaded the mules with the spoil and made off. Quoth Alaeddin to himself, ‘Thy dress and mule will be the death of thee.’ So he put off his cassock and threw it over the back of a mule, remaining in his shirt and drawers alone; after which he went to the door of the tent and finding there a pool of blood from the slain, rolled himself in it, till he was as a slain man, drowned in his blood. Meanwhile Ajlan said to his men, ‘O Arabs, was this caravan bound from Egypt for Baghdad or from Baghdad for Egypt?’ ‘It was bound from Egypt for Baghdad,’ answered they. ‘Then,’ said he, ‘return to the slain, for methinks the owner of the caravan is not dead.’ So they turned back and fell to larding the slain with lance and sword-thrusts, [lest any life were left in them,] till they came to Alaeddin, who had laid himself among the dead bodies. Quoth they, ‘Thou dost but feign thyself dead,