Sadok stood still, with his naked arm outstretched.
“How shall I know that the son of a scorpion will pay me the fifty golden coins? He is poor, though he speaks bravely. He is but a singer in the café of the smokers of the hashish, and cannot buy even a new garment for the close of the feast of Ramadan. How, then, shall I know that the gold will hang from my breasts when to-morrow, at the falling of the sun, I dance before the men of Toug—”
Ben-Abid put his hand beneath his burnous, and brought forth a bag tied at the mouth with cord.
“They are here!” he said.
“The Jews! He has been to the Jews!” cried the desert men.
“Bring a lamp!” said Ben-Abid.
And while Irena and Boria, the Golden Date and the Lotus Flower, held the lights, and the desert men crowded about him with the eyes of wolves that are near to starving, he counted forth the money on the terrace at Halima’s feet. And she gazed down at the glittering pieces as one that gazes upon a black fate.
“And now set my brothers upon the maiden,” Ben-Abid said to Sadok, gathering up the money, and casting it again into the bag, which he tied once more with the cord.
Halima did not move, but she looked upon the scorpion that was black, and her red lips trembled. Then she closed her hand upon the hedgehog’s foot that hung from her golden girdle, and shut her eyes beneath her ebon eyebrows.
“Set my brothers upon her!” said Ben-Abid.