The dying man pressed Timar's hand convulsively to his breast: on his distorted features was already imprinted the last death-struggle. "What was I talking of? What had I to tell you? What was my last word? Yes; right--the Red Crescent!"
Through the open window the half-circle of the waning moon shone blood-red, rising from the nocturnal mists. Was the dying man in his delirium thinking of this? Or did it remind him of something?
"Yes--the Red Crescent," he stammered once more; then the death-throes closed his lips--one short struggle, and he was a corpse.
Timar remained alone with the dead body, with a person sunk in a death-like stupor, and with a buried secret. The silent night covered them, and the shades whispered to him, "See! if you do not do what has been committed to you--if you throw the corpse into the Danube, and do not wake the slumberer, but let her sleep on quietly into the other world--what would happen then? The spy will have already given evidence in Pancsova against the fugitive Tschorbadschi; but if you anticipate him and the land at Belgrade instead, and lay information there, then, according to Turkish law, a third of the refugee's property would fall to you; otherwise it would belong to no one. The father is dead, the girl, if you do not rouse her, will never wake again; thus you would become at one stroke a rich man. Only rich people are worth anything in this world--poor devils are only fit for clerks."
Timar answered the spirits of the night--"Well, then, I will always remain a clerk;" and, in order to silence these murmuring shadows, he closed the shutters. A secret anxiety beset him when he saw the red moon outside; it seemed as if all these bad suggestions came from it, as well as an explanation of the last words of the dying man about the Red Crescent.
He drew back the curtain from Timéa's berth.
The girl lay like a living statue; her bosom rose and fell with her slow breathing--the lips were half open, the eyes shut; her face wore an expression of unearthly solemnity. One hand was raised to her loosened hair, the other held the folds of her white dress together on her breast.
Timar approached her as if she were an enchanted fairy whose touch might cause deadly heart-sickness to a poor mortal. He began to rub the temples of the sleeper with the fluid from the bottle. In doing so, he looked continually in her face, and thought to himself, "What, should I let you die, you angelic creature? If the whole ship were filled with real pearls, which would be mine after your death, I could not let you sleep away your life. There is no diamond in the world, however precious, that I should prefer to your eyes when you open them."