Yussuf smiled as best he could for the distortion of his mouth, as he searched in his cummerbund and pulled out a flask, filled with the strong narcotic he took to still the throbbing of his torn nerves when the wind blew from the north.
“’Tis overpowerful, little brother. A drop too little and she wakes from her sleep like a tigress bereft of her cubs; a drop too much and she wakes not at all.”
“Twenty drops and what....”
The voice from behind was stilled suddenly as the men rose quickly and stood staring up to the platform outside Zarah’s dwelling.
Zarah stood looking down.
She stood almost upon the spot from where some years ago she had hurled her spear at the fighting dogs, and, killing the one intended for a gift to her father’s guest, had followed the decree of Fate, who had tangled her life’s thread with those of her white prisoners.
“Zarah is a very queen of loveliness!”
“Yea! with hair like the setting sun!”
The hawk-eyed men with the superb sight of those who live in the clear atmosphere of great spaces criticized in detail the Arabian’s garments, which at such a distance would have shown as a white blur to the eyes of the westerner, accustomed as he is to an horizon bounded by walls and a sky ever limited by chimney-pots or partially obliterated by smoke or fog.