“Now, here is a leaden ball; mark it with your knife, so as to be able to recognize it, and put it in the pistol, with a second wad.”
“It is done.”
“Now that you are quite sure your pistol is loaded, and that it will explode, tell me, do you feel no remorse, no scruple about killing me thus, although I authorize you to do so?”
“No, for I wish to kill you,” the Arab repeated, coldly.
Without replying, I put an apple on the point of a knife, and, standing a few yards from the Marabout, ordered him to fire.
“Aim straight at the heart,” I said to him.
My opponent aimed immediately, without the slightest hesitation.
The pistol exploded, and the bullet lodged in the centre of the apple.
I carried the talisman to the Marabout, who recognized the ball he had marked.
I could not say that this trick produced greater stupefaction than the ones preceding it: at any rate, my spectators, palsied by surprise and terror, looked round in silence, seeming to think, “Where the deuce have we got to here!”