The plunger of the wells sprang upon Halima, opened her scarlet bodice roughly, plunged his claw into her swelling bosom, and withdrew it—empty.
“Kiss her close, my brothers!” whispered Ben-Abid.
A long murmur, like the growl of the tide upon a shingly beach, arose once more from the crowd. Halima turned about, and went slowly in at her lighted doorway, followed by Irena and Boria. The heavy door of palm was shut behind them. The light was hidden. There was a great silence. It was broken by Sadok’s voice screaming in his beard to Ben-Abid, “My money! Give me my money!”
He snatched it with a howl, and went capering forth into the darkness.
When the next night fell upon the desert there was a great crowd assembled in the café of the dancers. The pipers blew into their pipes, and swayed upon their haunches, turning their glittering eyes to and fro to see what man had a mind to press a piece of money upon their well greased foreheads. The dancers came and went, promenading arm in arm upon the earthen floor, or leaping with hands outstretched and fingers fluttering. The Kabyle attendant slipped here and there with the coffee cups, and the wreaths of smoke curled lightly upward towards the wooden roof.
But Halima came not through the open doorway holding the scarlet handkerchiefs above her head.
And presently, late in the night, they laid her body in a palanquin, and set the palanquin upon a running camel, and, while the dancers shrilled their lament amid the sands, they bore her away into the darkness of the dunes towards the south and the tents of her own people.
The jackals laughed as she went by.
But the hedgehog’s foot was left lying upon the floor of her chamber. Not one of the dancers would touch it.