ut you
can tell their movements by the long oily waves (like the heads of large
arrows) which their fins throw behind them as they quest from carcase to
carcase down there in the ooze.

Thither in the murk of night came Montferrat in a black cloak, holding
his nose, but made feverish through his ears by the veiled chorus of the
flies. By the starshine and glow of the putrid water he saw a tall man
in a white robe, who stood at the extreme edge of the spit and looked at
the sharks. Montferrat hid his guards behind the Tower, crossed himself,
drew his sword to hack a way through the monstrous flies, and so came
swishing forward, like a man who mows a swathe.

The tall man saw him, but did not move. The Marquess came quite close.

'What are you looking at, my friend?' he asked, in the Arabian tongue.

'I am looking at the sharks, which have a new corpse in there,' said the
man. 'See what a turmoil there is in the water. There must be six
monsters together in that swirl. See, see, there speeds another!'

The Marquess turned sick. 'God help, I cannot look,' he said.

'Why,' said the Arabian, 'It is a dead man they fight over.'

'May be, may be,' said the Marquess. 'You, my friend, are very familiar
with death. So am I; nor do I fear living man. But these great fish
terrify me.'

'You are a fool,' returned the other. 'They seek only their meat. But
you and I, and our like, seek nicer things than that. We have our souls
to feed; and the soul of a man is a free eater, of stranger appetite
than a shark.'

The Marquess looked at the flies. 'O God, Arabian, let us go away from
this place! Is there no rest from the flies?

'None at all,' said the Arabian; 'for thousands have been slain here;
and the flies also must be fed.'

'Pah, horrible!' said the Marquess, all in a sweat. The Arabian turned;
but his face was hidden, with a horrible appearance, as if a hooded
cloak stood up by itself and a voice proceeded from a fleshless garb.
'You, Marquess of Montferrat,' it said, 'what do you want with me by the
Tower of Flies?'

The Marquess remembered his needs. 'I want the death of a man,' he said;
'but not here, O Christ.'

'Who sent you?' asked the Arabian.

'The Sheik Moffadin, a captive, in the name of Ali, and of Abdallah,
servant of Ali.' So the Marquess, and would have kissed the man, but
that he saw no face under the hood, and dared not kiss emptiness.

'Come with me,' said the Arabian.

* *