"He called loudly on a supposed protector in the adjoining tent to come to the 'window,' and prove to his captor that he was under protection of a Moslem. As he spoke he slowly drew the coat from before the mirror in front of which the sheik was standing.
"No words can express the unutterable consternation pictured upon that blazing face, livid with fright and wonder, as for the first time it saw its own awful reflection, not knowing it was its own. One instant he stood stock-still, fascinated, horrified, overwhelmed; then collapsed, just as that lady did but a moment ago, and the American quickly possessed himself of his captor's arms and was master of the situation.
"And now, gentlemen," concluded the story teller, "we will have our game."
As he spoke he again reached forward to turn the trump. There was a quickly drawn breath of horror from those who observed him, for the first three fingers of his left hand were missing.
Before he could turn the card, a savage lurch of the boat, accompanied by the creaking of timbers, announced the arrival of the "Rappahannock" at her New York slip—and the trump was never turned.
THE REAL THING
Just before midnight on the ninth day of December in the year 1881, Malcolm Joyce, of New Haven, made the acquaintance of the real thing. Prior to that time he had been a sceptic. At the time of his startling experience, he was in San Francisco, visiting friends whose home was charmingly situated near the summit of Nob Hill, that conspicuous eminence on California Street, once the scene of "sand-lot" riots, and famous for its palaces of millionaires.
Joyce, having spent the evening with his host at a theatre party and an hour at whist, had glanced over a packet of London papers, smoked a cigar, and turned off the light preparatory to going to bed. He stepped to the large bay window of his chamber, to enjoy for a moment the impressive panorama spread below him in the sombre silence.
There before him, just across the bay, whose fantastically scattered lights of red and green serve as guiding stars to the mariner passing through the Golden Gate, lay Oakland, the beautiful city of sunny homes. To his left loomed up with awe-inspiring grandeur through the dim shadows the palatial residences of the immediate vicinity, each dark and silent in its solitary majesty. To the right, in the very shadow of this manifestation of Occidental millions, and but a block distant, lay acres of dismal roofs, sheltering never-ending scenes of Oriental contrast—Chinatown—with its fifty thousand souls, its underground opium joints and gambling hells, its temples of wealth and piety and dens of vice and penury.
As Joyce turned from the contemplation of the strange contrast presented by the scene, the silence of which was broken only by the ceaseless buzz of the invisible cables in the street below, he was startled by the signal gongs of two cable cars which passed each other directly in front of the house. Almost unconsciously he returned to his position at the window and paused to watch the one disappear over the summit, while the other as speedily descended the long, steep hill, so steep that its pavement, never trodden by horses' hoofs, is grass-grown in the crevices. He stood but a moment and then, realizing the lateness of the hour, turned abruptly to go to bed. As he did so, his eyes swept once more the hilltop just beyond.