“Oh, that many may know The end of this day’s business, ere it come;
But it sufficeth that the day will end,
And then the end is known.”
—Julius C?sar.
 
A tedious ride brought the five knights nigh Shunem, the City of Elijah.
 
“We’ll find no prophet’s chamber here for such as we,” remarked Sir Charleroy.
 
“Perhaps,” said a comrade, “we may by force or cajoling find a breakfast; a cake or cruse of oil.”
 
“Anyhow,” replied the chief, “we must try for a little food. We can neither fight nor flee with gaunt hunger on our flanks. Who knows, after all, but that we may happen on a humane being in these parts.”
 
“Well, good captain, if we should find a Shulamite, black, but comely, she might be as loving to thee as that one of old was to Solomon, although——”
 
The sentence was broken off by the interrupting command of Sir Charleroy, “Men, quick to cover; to the lemon-tree grove on the right!”
 
A glance back revealed a host of armed men behind the knights.
 
“All saints defend!” cried the Templar, as the little band wheeled toward the refuge.
 
[83]
 
The tale of the battle to the death that ensued, is quickly told.
 
Sir Charleroy, though he had fought with reckless bravery, as one hotly pursuing death, alone survived. A bludgeon blow felled him; when he recovered consciousness, he beheld standing by his side a gorgeously bedecked Moslem. The clangor of the conflict was over; the blood in which he weltered, and the vicious eyes that watched him, were all that reminded the knight of what had recently transpired. Presently the latter addressed the one that stood guard:
 
“Why is the infidel so tardy in finishing his work?”
 
“Is the Crusader in a hurry to reach night?” sententiously replied the man of gorgeous trappings.
 
“He would like to stay long enough to execute a murderer—the chief of thy horde.”
 
“My horde? Thou knowest me?”
 
“Oh, yes, ‘Azrael, Angel of Death,’ thy minions call thee; but I defy thee as I loathe thee.”
 
The chief’s brow darkened; his sword rose in air, and he exclaimed: “Hercules was healed of a serpent bite, ages ago, at Acre; Islamism in the same place recently; I must finish the hydra by cutting off thy hissing head, Christian.”
 
Sir Charleroy steadily met his captor’s gaze, eye to eye, and was silent.
 
The chief paused; then lowering his sword, toyed its point against the cross on the prostrate man’s breast.
 
“Bitter tongue, thou dost worship a death sign; dost thou so love death?”
 
[84]
 
“Death befriends those who wear that sign in truth; this is my comfort standing now at the rim of earth’s last night.”
 
“Thy bright red blood and unwrinkled brow bespeak youth, the power to enjoy life. Youth and such power is ever a prayer for more time; thou liest to thyself and me by professing to seek thy end.”
 
“How wonderful! The ‘Angel of Death’ is a soul-reader as well as a murderer!” bitterly rejoined Sir Charleroy.
 
“Well, then, refute me! Here’s thy greasy, blood-stained sword; now go, by thine own hands, if thou darest, to judgment.”
 
“Trusting God, I may defy thee; yet not hurry Him!”
 
“I like the Christian’s metal. I might let him live.”
 
“Life would be a mean gift now; a painful departure from the threshold of Paradise, to renew weary pilgrimages.”
 
“I may be merciful.”
 
“I do not believe it.”
 
“Thou shalt.”
 
“When I believe in the tenderness of jackals and tigers, in the sincerity of transparent hypocrisy, I’ll praise the mercy of Azrael.”
 
“Our holy Koran reveals a bridge finer than a hair, sharper than a sword, beset with thorns, laid over hell. From that bridge, with an awful plunge, the wicked go eternally down; over it safely, swiftly, the holy pass to happiness. Art ready to try that bridge?”
 
“Ready for the land of forgetfulness; no swords nor crescents are there.”
 
[85]
 
“No, thou wouldst only reach Orf, the partition of hell, where the half-saints tarry; thy bravery merits that much; but I’ll teach thee to reach better realms.”
 
“Turk, Mameluke, ’tis fiendish to prejudge a dying soul; leave judgment to God, and share now all that is within thy power, my body, with thy fit partners, the vultures!”
 
“A living slave is worth more to me than a dead knight; I’ve an humor to let thee live.”
 
“Oh, most merciful hypocrite! I did not think thou couldst tell the truth so readily; but let me, I beseech thee, be the dead knight.”
 
“What if I save thy life, teach thee the puissant faith of Islam, give thee leadership, and with it opportunity to win entrance to that highest Paradise, whose gateway is overshadowed by swords of the brave? There thou mayest dwell forever with Allah and the adolescent houris.”
 
“Enough; unless thou dost aim to torture me! I’m a Knight of Saint Mary, and thou full well knowest the measure of my vows; how throughout this land my Order has warred against thy hateful polygamy, thy gilded lusts here, thy Harem heaven hereafter! Ye thrive by luring to your standards men aflame now with the fire that burns such souls at last in black perdition. I tell thee to thy teeth, thou and thine are living devils. But ye war against the wisdom of the world and the law of God; though triumphing now, ye will rot amid your riots and victories.”
 
The chief’s face grew black as night for an instant, but recovering himself, he continued, sarcastically at first, then with the zeal of a proselyter:
 
[86]
 
“Speak low, thou, last dying vestige of a wan faith! Thou mightst make my solemn followers yell with ridiculing laughter! I tell thee of life and of a faith as natural as nature herself. Listen; there is for the brave and faithful a Paradise whose rivers are white as milk as odoriferous as musk. There are sights for the eye, fetes most delicious and music never ceasing to ravish; these lure the brilliantly-robed faithful to the black-eyed daughters of Pleasure. One look at them would reward such as we for a world-life of pain; and the children of the prophet’s faith are given the eternities to companion these splendid creatures whose forms created of musk know no infirmity, but survive, always, as adolescent fountains. The heaven of Islamism is eternal youth, eternally luxurious.”
 
“It befits the Angel of Death to gild a deformed hell with bedazzling words. Thou and thine glorify lust, and thy heaven, like thy harem, is but a brothel after all. Now let me blast thy gorgeous charnel-house with the lightning of God’s Word: ‘Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God!’”
 
Sir Charleroy had raised himself up as he was speaking; now he fell back, exhausted. He again felt the glow in his heart that he felt on the quay when the English bishop blessed him; but it seemed more real now than then, and the approvings of conscience some way came with rebukes that caused tears to flow. He felt something akin to real penitence for a life that had not been always up to the ideal that this debate had caused him to exalt. As he fell back he closed his eyes and turned his face from his captor; the act was a prayer to be helped to shut out of his mind the picture[87] of gilded lust depicted by the false teacher that stood by. For a few moments the wounded man was left to his own thoughts, and then his heart went out toward home crying like a sick or lost child in the night, for “Mother!” Once more he returned to that duality of existence which comes when one enters into personal introspections. There seemed to be two Sir Charleroys, one writing the history of the other, and the writer was recording such estimates as these: “As he lay there, nigh death, he drew near to God. He had once been a rover, seeking the wildest pleasures of the European capitals; but meeting passion, presented as the ultimate of life, for all eternity, his soul recoiled from it and he became the herald of purity. Once he had friends, wealth and physical prowess; but he squandered them as a prodigal; when he lay bleeding, powerless in body, amid strangers, a slave, he rose to the majesty of a moral giant.” The Sir Charleroy that was thus reviewed was comforted, and he stood off from the picture in imagination to admire it, as one standing before a mirror. Just then he thought of his mother and Mary, his ideal, sta............