And again a silence fell. Only the snorting of the horses and the quickened breathing of the human breasts could be heard.
"Untie Kali!" Chamis suddenly exclaimed to Gebhr, "and we will escape on the horses; the lion will first overtake him, and kill him only."
"Do that," repeated the Bedouins.
But Gebhr surmised that in such a case Kali, in the twinkling of an eye, would climb on the rocky wall and the lion would chase after the horses; therefore another horrible idea suggested itself to him. He would kill the boy with his knife and fling his body ahead of him and then the lion, dashing after them, would see on the ground the bleeding corpse and stop to devour it.
So he dragged Kali by the rope to the saddle and had already raised his knife, when in the same second Stas clutched the wide sleeve of his jubha.
"Villain! What are you doing?"
Gebhr began to tug and, if the boy had seized him by the hand, he would have freed it at once, but it was not so easy with the sleeve; so he began to tug, and splutter with a voice stifled with fury.
"Dog! if he is not enough, I shall stab you both! Allah! I shall stab you! I shall stab you!"
And Stas paled mortally, for like lightning the thought flashed through his mind that the lion chasing after the horses above all might actually overlook Kali, and in such case Gebhr with the greatest certainty would stab them both in turn.
So pulling the sleeve with redoubled strength he shouted:
"Give me the short rifle! I will kill the lion!"
These words astonished the Bedouins, but Chamis, who had witnessed Stas' shooting in Port Said, began at once to cry:
