Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish by Alarcón, Pedro Antonio de, 1833-1891, Becquer, Gustavo Adolfo, 1836-1870, Caballero, Fernán, 1796-1877, Selgas y Carrasco, José, 1824-1882

"Admet, do you intend to abandon me?"

"Don't be an ass, woman!" answered the Moor. "Who is talking of such a thing now? You know very well that you please me and that you are useful to me. The question now is whether you have understood my charge perfectly."

"Give it here!" said the Moorish woman, taking the letter and placing it in her dark-skinned bosom, next her heart. "If any evil should happen to you, this letter shall be placed in the post at Ceuta, though I should drop dead the moment after."

Aben-Carime smiled with a human smile when he heard these words, and deigned to let his eyes rest upon his wife as if she were a human being.

X.

The Moorish couple must have slept soundly and sweetly among the thickets on the roadside that night, for it was fully nine o'clock on the following morning when they reached the foot of Cape Negro.

At that place there is a village of Arab shepherds and husbandmen, called Medick, consisting of a few huts, a morabito or Mohammedan hermitage, and a well of fresh water, with its curb-stone and its copper bucket, like the wells we see represented in certain biblical scenes.

At this hour the village was completely deserted, its inhabitants having betaken themselves, with their cattle and their implements of labor, to the neighboring hills and glens.

"Wait for me here," said Manos-gordas to his wife. "I am going in quest of Ben-Munuza, who at this hour is probably ploughing his fields on the other side of yonder hill."

"Ben-Munuza!" exclaimed Zama, with a look of terror; "the renegade of whom you spoke to me?"

"Make your mind easy," returned Manos-gordas. "I have the upper hand now. In a few hours I shall be back and you will see him following me like a dog. This is his cabin. Wait for us inside, and make us a good mess of alcazus, with the maize and the butter you will find at hand. You know I like it well cooked. Ah, I forgot. If I should not be back before nightfall, ascend the hill, crossover to the other side, and if you do not find me there, or if you should find my dead body, return to Ceuta and post this letter.--Another thing: if you should find me dead, search my clothing for this parchment; if you do not find it upon me, you will know that Ben-Munuza has robbed me of it; in which case proceed from Ceuta to Tetuan and denounce him as a thief and an assassin to the authorities. That is all I have to tell you. Farewell!"

The Moorish woman wept bitterly as Manos-gordas took the path that led to the summit of the neighboring hill.

XI.

On reaching the other side of the hill Manos-gordas descried in a glen, a short distance off, a corpulent Moor dressed in white, ploughing the black earth with the help of a fine yoke of oxen, in patriarchal fashion. This man, who seemed a statue of Peace carved in marble, was the morose and dreaded renegade, Ben-Munuza, the details of whose story would make the reader shudder with horror, if he were to hear them.