Ben Aboo knew his awful fate.Gesticulating wildly, having flung the money-bags from him, slobbering and screaming, the blighted soul was seen to raise his eyes towards the black sky, his thick lubber lips working visibly, as if in wild invocation of heaven.At the next instant the stones began to fall on him.Slowly they fell at first, and he reeled under them like a drunken man; the back of his neck arched itself like the neck of a bull, and like the roar of a bull was the groan that came from his throat.Then they fell faster, and he swayed to and fro, and grunted, with his beard bobbing at his breast, and his tongue lolling out.Faster and faster, and thicker and thicker they showered upon him, darting out of the darkness like swallows of the night.His clothes were rent, his blood spirted over them, he staggered as a beast staggers in the slaughter, and at length his thick knees doubled up, and he fell in a round heap like a ball.
The ferocity of the crowd was not yet quelled.They hailed the fall of Ben Aboo with a triumphant howl, but their stones continued to shower upon his body.In a little while they had piled a cairn above it.Then they left it with curses of content and went their ways.When the Spanish soldiers, who had stood aside while the work was done, came up with their lanterns to look at this monument of Eastern justice, the heap of stones was still moving with the terrific convulsions of death.
Such was the fall of El Arby, nicknamed Ben Aboo.