grave and its straitness and all this [beating], trusting in God
that I might be delivered from death, and [hitherto] I have been
delivered; but, as for the sword, I may not brook that, for but
one stroke of it, and I am a dead man.'

So saying, he sprang to his feet and catching up the thigh-bone
of one of the dead, cried out at the top of his voice, saying, 'O
ye dead, take them!' And he smote one of them, whilst his comrade
[El Merouzi] smote another and they cried out at them and
buffeted them on the napes of their necks; whereupon the thieves
left that which was with them of plunder and fled; and indeed
their wits forsook them [for terror] and they stayed not in their
flight till they came forth of the Magians' burial-ground and
left it a parasang's length behind them, when they halted,
trembling and affrighted for the soreness of that which had
betided them of fear and amazement at the dead.

As for Er Razi and El Merouzi, they made peace with each other
and sat down to share the booty. Quoth El Merouzi, 'I will not
give thee a dirhem of this money, till thou pay me my due of the
money that is in thy house.' And Er Razi said 'I will not do it,
nor will I subtract this from aught of my due.' So they fell out
upon this and disputed with one another and each went saying to
his fellow, 'I will not give thee a dirhem!' And words ran high
between them and contention was prolonged.

Meanwhile, when the thieves halted, one of them said to the
others, 'Let us return and see;' and the captain said, 'This
thing is impossible of the dead: never heard we that they came to
life on this wise. So let us return and take our good, for that