Beneath the caked pigments on her face Halima had gone pale.
“I will not,” she began.
But the cries rose up again, and with them the shrill, twittering laughter of her envious rivals.
“She has no faith in the marabout!” squawked one, who had a nose like an eagle’s beak.
“She is a liar!” piped another, shaking out her silken petticoats as a bird shakes out its plumes.
And then the twitter of fierce laughter rose, shriek on shriek, and was echoed more deeply by the crowd of watching men.
“Give me the scorpions!” cried Halima passionately. “I am not afraid!”
Her desert blood was up. Her fatalism—even in the women of the Sahara it lurks—was awake. In that moment she was ready to die, to silence the bitter laughter of her rivals. It sank away as Sadok grasped the scorpions in his filthy claw, and leaped, gibbering in his beard, upon the terrace.
“Wait!” cried Halima, as he came upon her, holding forth his handful of writhing poison.
Her bosom heaved. Her lustrous eyes, heavy with kohl, shone like those of a beast at bay.