For an instant Pan Strahinja draws his hands across his brow; for an instant he meditates. The dinner he gave had indeed been a wild orgy. The devil take dinners like that! Again he looks at the place beside him; it looks just the same. The woman was gone.
And Pan Strahinja—listen, my swine—the great Pan Strahinja roared. He roared like a bull. He roared until the swinging lamp of bronze began to tremble. He roared until his sword shook in its scabbard; roared until the guard awakened from their napping, and seized their spears; until the horses in the stalls began to whinny—The woman had been stolen. A moment of meditation.
There was no room for doubt. It was self evident. It was clear as daylight. It was the Turk who had stolen her. He had shown her to him in the evening just as he had shown him his horses, his weapons, and his dogs. Of course it was the Turk! The Turk—that little crooked legged, insignificant, dirty Turk! She was with the Turk! And Pan Strahinja—the great Pan Strahinja began to laugh like the spirits of a thousand mad men.
His men ran to the door of his tent.
“Nothing. I was dreaming—ha, ha, ha—I just dreamed that you brought me the crown of the Serbs—you dogs. Didn’t you? Well—very good. Now go—go.”
Hardly are they out of sight when he whistles for his black slave. A few moments later a stallion stands saddled in front of the tent. He puts on his sword; it leaps from the belt toward him like a woman. And then comes his greyhound—Karaman—and leaps toward him. He swings into his gold-worked saddle, and away he rides, out upon the heights, in the sweet, star-clear night.
What a picture, my swine, what a picture! And what a thought! Pan Strahinja under the light of the moon, riding upon a stallion from whose mouth the white foam falls and clings in flecks to breast and shoulder—Pan Strahinja, riding away in the night after the pale, blond slave-child.
She had soft, strange movements she had learned from the animals of the wild. She had slender, graceful limbs and cool, sweet skin; skin cold to the touch like the skin of an Indian serpent—like the chill of the interior of sunless temples.
Ahead already stands the tent of the Turk. In a moment he has crossed the enclosure and his stallion waits by the door. Slowly he has slipped from the saddle.