ur life will still be given you if you renounce Christ and proclaim
Allah and Mohammed as His prophet."

This is how Sabat himself described what happened next. "Abdallah made
no answer, but looked up steadfastly toward heaven, like Stephen, the
first martyr, his eyes streaming with tears. He looked at me," said
Sabat, "but it was with the countenance of forgiveness."

Abdallah's other arm was stretched out, again the sword flashed and
fell. His other hand dropped to the ground. He stood there bleeding
and handless. He bowed his head and his neck was bared to the sword.
Again the blade flashed. He was beheaded, and Sabat--Sabat who had
ridden a thousand miles with his friend and had faced with him
the blistering sun of the desert and the snow-blizzard of the
mountain--saw Abdallah's head lie there on the ground and the dead
body carried away.

Abdallah had died because he was faithful to Jesus Christ and because
Sabat had obeyed the law of Mohammed.

_The Old Sabat and the New_

The news spread through Bokhara like a forest fire. They could hardly
believe that a man would die for the Christian faith like that. As
Sabat told his friends afterward, "All Bokhara seemed to say, 'What
new thing is this?'"

But Sabat was in agony of mind. Nothing that he could do would take
away from his eyes the vision of his friend's face as Abdallah had
looked at him when his hands were being cut off. He plunged out on
to the camel tracks of Asia to try to forget. He wandered far and he
wandered long, but he could not forget or find rest for his tortured
mind.

At last he sailed away on the seas and landed on the coast of India at
Madras. The British East India Company then ruled in India, and they
gave Sabat a post in the civil courts as mufti, _i.e._ as an expounder
of the law of Mohammed. He spent most of his time in a coast town
north of Madras, called Vizagapatam.[59] A friend handed to him
there a little book in his native language--Arabic. It was another
translation of those stories that Abdallah had read in Kabul--it was
the New Testament.[60]

Sabat sat reading this New Book. He then took up the book of
Mohammed's law--the Koran--which it was his daily work to explain. He
compared the two. "The truth came"--as he himself said--"like a flood
of light." He too began to worship Jesus Christ, whose life he had
read now for the first time in the New Testament. Sabat decided that
he must follow in Abdallah's footsteps. He b