He was breathing very hard all the time and sweat was pouring off his naked body. One could see that he was making a tremendous effort, but where, or how, one could not understand.
At last he stopped, laid the crystal down on the banana-leaf and looked intently at the lizard. We looked too.
I know that no one will believe what happened next, but I must tell the thing as it occurred. The lizard moved.
We watched it, holding our breath. It moved again. It drew its legs under it.
The sorcerer took the crystal up and drew more lines in the air, breathing hard and narrowing down his eyes till they were two black sparks beneath his beetling eyebrows.
The lizard got up, staggered and walked away. It was alive.
I never wished I knew French until that minute. It would have been something to understand the expletives that the Marquis was pouring out in a sharp, rattling, musketry fire of amazed profanity and delight. I said a thing or two myself, but it sounded meek and mild by comparison. And he did not stop for a good three minutes. Then he got up—the sorcerer was standing now—and seized the greasy savage in his arms, rocking him about as if he were a child.
“I have found it—the true occult power—genuine article, all-wool and a yard wide—my God, yes!” he exclaimed. In his excitement he was going to our stores to give the sorcerer I don’t know what or how much of our invaluable food, but I stopped him in time.
“Don’t do it, Marky,” I said. “Never let these brutes know how much you have, or they’ll loot you, first chance. You’ve given him quite enough. I allow it’s wonderful, but there may be some very simple explanation after all.”
“You do not understand,” said the Marquis. “You have no faith. Let me look yet again at the crystal. It is of course but an instrument of the power—still——”