Concluding to cross the bridge, he cried "Arrah!" again, and drove the donkey forward with one blow of his stick.
But when the donkey was in the middle of it, the rotten thing gave way, and the beast and its burden fell into the ditch.

The donkey's legs were broken, and when a throng of Arabs, who gathered at the Spaniard's cry, had cut away its panniers and dragged it out of the water on to the paving-stones of the street, the film covered its eyes, and in a moment it was dead.
At that the man knelt down beside it, and patted it on its neck, and called on it by its name, as if unwilling to believe that it was gone.
And while the Arabs laughed at him for doing so--for none seemed to pity him--a slatternly girl of sixteen or seventeen came scudding down the arcade, and pushed her way through the crowd until she stood where the dead ass lay with the man kneeling beside it.

Then she fell on the man with bitter reproaches.

"Allah blot out your name, you thief!" she cried.

"You've killed the creature, and may you starve and die yourself, you dog of a Nazarene!" This was more than Israel could listen to, and he commanded the girl to hold her peace.