And yet I was absorbed in Nikka's success. My heart leaped in my throat when I saw that he was trying for the third time the trick which had twice failed. His knife went up in the same way, he shifted posture as he had in his other tries, and Toutou mechanically side-stepped as experience had told him was safe and aimed a stab which should have cut Nikka's throat. But Nikka was not there. He had varied the trick. Stooping, his knife had fallen, then sliced upward—and Toutou staggered, a look of bland surprise on his face, ripped open from belly to chest.
"Pt-sss-ss-tss-sst!" he hissed, and fell forward.
Kara hurled herself into Nikka's arms.
"You are the greatest knife-fighter of the Tziganes!" she cried triumphantly. "You are a king! You are my man! See, while you conquered your enemy, I, too, stabbed the rat who tried to put his knife in your back."
And she led Nikka to the body of Hilmi, which, I regret to say, she kicked with her brown toes. Nikka absent-mindedly leaned over to wipe his knife on the Levantine's coat-tails, but Kara intervened.
"No, no," she exclaimed. "Here is my hair! Wipe it on my hair, beloved of my heart. Let me suck it clean with my lips! So we shall have strong sons."
Nikka looked sufficiently annoyed to show that he had some instincts of civilization remaining.
"Peace," he ordered royally. "Be quiet, girl!"
She cowered before him, and he recognized me.
"Oh, hullo, Jack! Where's Hugh?"