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.
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.