With no other guide than the sun by day, and by night the host of stars, the two captains soon lost sight of each other, and all the sooner, as Fadrique avoided intentionally the object of his aversion. Heimbert, on the other hand, had no thought but the attainment of his aim; and, full of joyful confidence in God’s assistance, he pursued his course in a southerly direction.

Many nights and many days had passed, when one evening, as the twilight was coming on, Heimbert was standing alone in the endless desert, unable to descry a single object all round on which his eye could rest. His light flask was empty, and the evening brought with it, instead or the hoped-for coolness, a suffocating whirlwind of sand, so that the exhausted wanderer was obliged to press his burning face to the burning soil in order to escape in some measure the fatal cloud. Now and then he heard something passing him, or rustling over him as with the sound of a sweeping mantle, and he would raise himself in anxious haste; but he only saw what he had already too often seen in the daytime—the wild beasts of the wilderness roaming at liberty through the desert waste. Sometimes it was an ugly camel, then it was a long-necked and disproportioned giraffe, and then again a long-legged ostrich hastening away with its wings outspread. They all appeared to scorn him, and he had already taken his resolve to open his eyes no more, and to give himself up to his fate, without allowing these horrible and strange creatures to disturb his mind in the hour of death.

Presently it seemed to him as if he heard the hoofs and neighing of a horse, and suddenly something halted close beside him, and he thought he caught the sound of a man’s voice. Half unwilling, he could not resist raising himself wearily, and he saw before him a rider in an Arab’s dress mounted on a slender Arabian horse. Overcome with joy at finding himself within reach of human help, he exclaimed, “Welcome, oh, man, in this fearful solitude! If thou canst, succor me, thy fellow-man, who must otherwise perish with thirst!” Then remembering that the tones of his dear German mother tongue were not intelligible in this joyless region, he repeated the same words in the mixed dialect, generally called the Lingua Romana, universally used by heathens, Mohammedans, and Christians in those parts of the world where they have most intercourse with each other.

The Arab still remained silent, and looked as if scornfully laughing at his strange discovery. At length he replied, in the same dialect, “I was also in Barbarossa’s fight; and if, Sir Knight, our overthrow bitterly enraged me then, I find no small compensation for it in the fact of seeing one of the conquerors lying so pitifully before me.” “Pitifully!” exclaimed Heimbert angrily, and his wounded sense of honor giving him back for a moment all his strength, he seized his sword and stood ready for an encounter. “Oho!” laughed the Arab, “does the Christian viper still hiss so strongly? Then it only behooves me to put spurs to my horse and leave thee to perish here, thou lost creeping worm!” “Ride to the devil, thou dog of a heathen!” retorted Heimbert; “rather than entreat a crumb of thee I will die here, unless the good God sends me manna in the wilderness.”

And the Arab spurred forward his swift steed and galloped away a couple of hundred paces, laughing with scorn. Then he paused, and looking round to Heimbert he trotted back and said, “Thou seemest too good, methinks, to perish here of hunger and thirst. Beware! my good sabre shall touch thee.”

Heimbert, who had again stretched himself hopelessly on the burning sand, was quickly roused to his feet by these words, and seized his sword; and sudden as was the spring with which the Arab’s horse flew toward him, the stout German warrior stood ready to parry the blow, and the thrust which the Arab aimed at him in the Mohammedan manner he warded off with certainty and skill.

Again and again the Arab sprung; similarly here and there, vainly hoping to give his antagonist a death-blow. At last, overcome by impatience, he approached so boldly that Heimbert, warding off the threatening weapon, had time to seize the Arab by the girdle and drag him from the fast-galloping horse. The violence of the movement threw Heimbert also on the ground, but he lay above his opponent, and holding close before his eyes a dagger, which he had dexterously drawn from his girdle, he exclaimed, “Wilt thou have mercy or death?” The Arab, trembling, cast down his eyes before the gleaming and murderous weapon, and said, “Show mercy to me, mighty warrior; I surrender to thee.” Heimbert then ordered him to throw away the sabre he still held in his right hand. He did so, and both combatants rose, and again sunk down upon the sand, for the victor was far more weary than the vanquished.

The Arab’s good horse meanwhile had trotted toward them, according to the habit of those noble animals, who never forsake their fallen master. It now stood behind the two men, stretching out its long slender neck affectionately toward them. “Arab,” said Heimbert with exhausted voice, “take from thy horse what provision thou hast with thee and place it before me.” The vanquished man humbly did as he was commanded, now just as much submitting to the will of the conqueror as he had before exhibited his animosity in anger and revenge. After a few draughts of palm-wine from the skin, Heimbert looked at the youth under a new aspect; he then partook of some fruits, drank more of the palm-wine, and at length said, “You are going to ride still farther to-night, young man?” “Yes, indeed,” replied the Arab sadly; “on a distant oasis there dwells my aged father and my blooming bride. Now—even if you set me at full liberty—I must perish in the heat of this barren desert, for want of sustenance, before I can reach my lovely home.”

“Is it, perhaps,” asked Heimbert, “the oasis on which the mighty enchantress, Zelinda, dwells?”

“Allah protect me!” cried the Arab, clasping his hands. “Zelinda’s wondrous isle offers no hospitable shelter to any but magicians. It lies far away in the scorching south, while our friendly oasis is toward the cooler west.”

“I only asked in case we might be travelling companions,” said Heimbert courteously. “If that cannot be, we must certainly divide the provisions; for I would not have so brave a warrior as you perish, with hunger and thirst.”

So saying, the young captain began to arrange the provisions in two portions, placing the larger on his left and the smaller at his right; he then desired the Arab to take the former, and added, to his astonished companion, “See, good sir, I have either not much farther to travel or I shall perish in the desert; I feel that it will be so. Besides, I cannot carry half so much on foot as you can on horse-back.”

“Knight! victorious knight!” cried the amazed Mussulman, “am I then to keep my horse?”

“It were a sin and shame indeed,” said Heimbert, smiling, “to separate such a faithful steed from such a skilful rider. Ride on, in God’s name, and get safely to your people.”

He then helped him to mount, and the Arab was on the point of uttering a few words of gratitude, when he suddenly exclaimed, “The magic maiden!” and, swift as the wind, he flew over the dusty plain. Heimbert, however, turning round, saw close beside him in the now bright moonlight a shining figure, which he at once perceived to be Zelinda.