"Be off, slave! Take your spade and set about your work!"
Then she covered herself once more with her veil that the bumpkin might not see her face again, and her contempt for him was so great that she did not even think it worth while to fear that the craven would abuse the secret that he had learnt. "He who dare not touch his master's wife will certainly never dare to lay a hand on his master's treasure."
Then, with a good deal of unnecessary bustle, she bounced out of the vineyard, first stopping to bestow on the slumbering Ibrahim a kick sufficiently vicious to awaken him.
The Turk, thus roughly aroused from his narcotic sleep, began first of all to throw his arms and legs about; then he revolved five or six times on his axis, and finally rolled over a little hillock into the garden below. There he lay for some time, dreaming on with wide-open eyes and addressing the paradisaical shapes which the opium had conjured up before him. Then he stared blankly into the world around him; began blinking with his eyes and plunging with his knees, and at last raised himself on his elbows and bellowed for his slave.
Valentine hastened up to him.
"Where is my wife?"
"Am I your wife's keeper? Perhaps she has gone home."
"I dreamt that she had been nibbling again at my plums. These women are so greedy. But I know that you, Valentine, have not eaten of my plums. Nor shall you do so, you dog! These plums are like the fruit of the tuba tree which stands in Paradise, and which you can never taste, you giaour, you swine, you! What have you done with my wife? It would be as well if I plucked all these plums and sent them to the pasha. What do you think he'll give me for them? Do you think that I can climb up that tree? What! I tell you I can fly up it like a squirrel."
Opium smokers in their drunken reveries always fancy themselves strong and agile. Yet the worthy man could not stand, much less fly.
So Valentine helped Ibrahim to climb the plum tree. The Turk was determined to pluck every one of the plums himself; the hand of a slave should never profane the dessert of the pasha.