Marzak looked at him and sneered. Then he snatched from Vigitello’s hands one of the cross-bows that he bore and set a shaft to it. And then at last Sakr-el-Bahr was to learn the malice that was at the root of all this odd pretence.
“Look now,” said the youth, “there is on that palmetto bale a speck of pitch scarce larger than the pupil of my eye. Thou’lt need to strain thy sight to see it. Observe how my shaft will find it. Canst thou better such a shot?”
His eyes, upon Sakr-el-Bahr’s face, watching it closely, observed the pallor by which it was suddenly overspread. But the corsair’s recovery was almost as swift. He laughed, seeming so entirely careless that Marzak began to doubt whether he had paled indeed or whether his own imagination had led him to suppose it.
“Ay, thou’lt choose invisible marks, and wherever the arrow enters thou’lt say ’twas there! An old trick, O Marzak. Go cozen women with it.”
“Then,” said Marzak, “we will take instead the slender cord that binds the bale.” And he levelled his bow. But Sakr-el-Bahr’s hand closed upon his arm in an easy yet paralyzing grip.
“Wait,” he said. “Thou’lt choose another mark for several reasons. For one, I’ll not have thy shaft blundering through my oarsmen and haply killing one of them. Most of them are slaves specially chosen for their brawn, and I cannot spare any. Another reason is that the mark is a foolish one. The distance is not more than ten paces. A childish test, which, maybe, is the reason why thou hast chosen it.”
Marzak lowered his bow and Sakr-el-Bahr released his arm. They looked at each other, the corsair supremely master of himself and smiling easily, no faintest trace of the terror that was in his soul showing upon his swarthy bearded countenance or in his hard pale eyes.
He pointed up the hillside to the nearest olive tree, a hundred paces distant. “Yonder,” he said, “is a man’s mark. Put me a shaft through the long branch of that first olive.”
Asad and his officers voiced approval.
“A man’s mark, indeed,” said the Basha, “so that he be a marksman.”