money-bags from him, slobbering and screaming, the blighted soul was
seen to raise his eyes towards the black sky, his thick lubber lips
working visibly, as if in wild invocation of heaven. At the next instant
the stones began to fall on him. Slowly they fell at first, and he
reeled under them like a drunken man; the back of his neck arched itself
like the neck of a bull, and like the roar of a bull was the groan that
came from his throat. Then they fell faster, and he swayed to and
fro, and grunted, with his beard bobbing at his breast, and his tongue
lolling out. Faster and faster, and thicker and thicker they showered
upon him, darting out of the darkness like swallows of the night. His
clothes were rent, his blood spirted over them, he staggered as a beast
staggers in the slaughter, and at length his thick knees doubled up, and
he fell in a round heap like a ball.

The ferocity of the crowd was not yet quelled. They hailed the fall of
Ben Aboo with a triumphant howl, but their stones continued to shower
upon his body. In a little while they had piled a cairn above it.
Then they left it with curses of content and went their ways. When the
Spanish soldiers, who had stood aside while the work was done, came up
with their lanterns to look at this monument of Eastern justice, the
heap of stones was still moving with the terrific convulsions of death.

Such was the fall of El Arby, nicknamed Ben Aboo.



CHAPTER XXVIII

"ALLAH-U-KABAR"