I sat still where I was, under the bayonets of the soldiers, who faced me and had their backs to their commander. My eyes were fixed steadily on the pair who stood conferring on the slope; and my mind was in a ferment. Scruples troubled me no more; Mouraki himself had made them absurd. I read my only chance of life in the choice or caprice of the wild passionate barbarian—he was little else—who stood with head meekly bowed and knife carelessly dangled in his hand. This man was he of whom Panayiota had spoken so mysteriously; he was the friend whom I had ‘more than I knew of.’ In his blood feud with the Pasha, in his revengeful wrath, lay my chance. It was only a chance, indeed, for the soldiers might kill me; but it was a chance, and there was no other; for if Mouraki won him over by promises or bribes, or intimidated him into doing his will, then Demetri would take the easier task, that which carried no risk and did not involve his own death, as an attack on the Pasha almost certainly would. Would he be prudent and turn his hand against the single helpless man? Or would his long-nursed rage stifle all care for himself and drive him against Mouraki? If so, if he chose that way, there was a glimmer of hope. I glanced at Phroso’s motionless figure and pallid face; I glanced at the little boat that floated on the water (why had Demetri not beached it?); I glanced at the rope which bound it to the other boat; I measured the distance between the boats and myself; I thrust my hand into the pocket of my coat and contrived to open the blade of my clasp-knife, which was now the only weapon left to me.
Mouraki spoke and smiled. He made no gesture but there was just a movement of his eyes towards me. Demetri’s eyes followed his for an instant, but would not dwell on my face. The Pasha spoke again. Demetri shook his head, and Mouraki’s face assumed a persuasive good-humoured expression. Demetri glanced round apprehensively. The Pasha took him by the arm, and they went a few paces further up the slope, so as to be more private in their talk—but was that the object with both of them? Still Demetri shook his head. The Pasha’s smile vanished, his mouth grew stern, his eyes cold, and he frowned. He spoke in short sharp sentences, the snap of his lips showing when his mind was spoken. Demetri seemed to plead. He looked uneasy, he shifted from foot to foot, he drew back from the imperious man, as though he shunned him and would fain escape from him. Mouraki would not let him go, but followed him in his retreat, step for step. Thus another ten yards were put between them and me. Anger and contempt blazed now on Mouraki’s face. He raised his hand and brought it down clenched on the palm of the other. Demetri held out his hand as though in protest or supplication. The Pasha stamped with his foot. There were no signs of relenting in his manner.
My eyes grew weary with intent watching. I felt like a man who has been staring at a bright white light, too fascinated by its intensity to blink or turn away, even though it pains him to look longer. The figures of the two seemed to become indistinct and blurred. I rubbed my knuckles into my eyes to clear my vision, and looked again. Yes; they were a little further off, even still a little further off than when I had looked before. It could not be by chance and unwittingly that Demetri always and always and always gave back a pace, luring the Pasha to follow him. No, there was a plan in his head; and in my heart suddenly came a great beat of savage joy—of joy at the chance Heaven gave, yes, and of lust for the blood of the man against whom I had so mighty a debt of wrong. And, as I gazed now, for an instant—a single, barely perceptible instant—came the swiftest message from Demetri’s eyes. I read it. I knew its meaning. I sat where I was, but every muscle of my body was tense and strung in readiness for that desperate leap, and every nerve of me quivered with a repressed excitement that seemed almost to kill. Now, now! Was it now? I was within an ace of crying ‘Strike!’ but I held the word in and still gazed. And the soldiers leant easily on their bayonets, exchanging a word or two now and again, yawning sometimes, weary of a dull job, wondering when his Excellency would let them get home again; of what was going on behind their backs, there on the slope of the cliff, they took no heed.
Ah, there was a change now! Demetri had ceased to protest, to deprecate and to retreat. Mouraki’s frowns had vanished, he smiled again in satisfaction and approval. Demetri threw a glance at me. Mouraki spoke. Demetri answered. For an instant I looked at the soldiers: they were more weary and inattentive than ever. Back went my eyes. Now Mouraki, with suave graciousness, in condescending recognition of a good servant, stepped right close up to Demetri and, raising his hand, reached round the fellow’s shoulder and patted him approvingly on the back.
‘It will be now!’ I thought; nay, I believe I whispered, and I drew my legs up under me and grasped the hidden knife in my pocket. ‘Yes, it must be now.’
Mouraki patted, laughed, evidently praised. Demetri bowed his head. But his long, lithe, bare, brown right arm that had hung so weary a time in idle waiting by his side—the arm whose hand held the great bright blade so lovingly polished, so carefully tested—the arm began slowly and cautiously to crawl up his side. It bent at the elbow, it rested a moment after its stealthy secret climb; then, quick as lightning, it flew above Demetri’s head, the blade sparkled in the sun, the hand swooped down, and the gleams of the sunlit steel were quenched in the body of Mouraki. With a sudden cry of amazement, of horror and of agony, the Pasha staggered and fell prone on the rocky ground; and Demetri cried, ‘At last, my God, at last!’ and laughed aloud.
“at last, my god, at last!”