ut 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 ma