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 became a Christian.[61] He was then twenty-seven years of age.

The Brother’s Dagger

In the world of the East news travels like magic by Arab dhow (sailing ship) and camel caravan.  Very quickly the news was in Arabia that Sabat had renounced Mohammed and become a Christian.  At once Sabat’s brother rose, girded on his dagger, left the tents of his tribe, mounted his camel and coursed across Arabia to a port.  There he took ship for Madras.  Landing, he disguised himself as an Indian and went up to Vizagapatam to the house where his brother Sabat was living.

Sabat saw this Indian, as he appeared to be, standing before him.  He suspected nothing.  Suddenly the disguised brother put his hand within his robe, seized his dagger, and leaping at Sabat made a fierce blow at him.  Sabat flung out his arm.  He spoilt his brother’s aim, but he was too late to save himself.  He was wounded, but not killed.  The brother threw off his disguise, and Sabat—­remembering the forgiveness of Abdallah—­forgave his brother, gave him many presents, and sent loving messages to his mother.

Sabat decided that he could no longer work as an expounder of Moslem law:  he wanted to do work that would help to spread the Christian Faith.  He went away north to Calcutta, and there he joined the great men who were working at the task of translating the Bible into different languages and printing them.  This work pleased Sabat, for was it not through reading an Arabic New Testament that all his own life had been changed?