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His fingers passed over the body: there, sticking in the breast, was a cangiar which Isaac, in his panic, had left, and Frankl's hand rested on the handle; if he did not consciously press the knife home, very heavily his hand rested on it, eyes blazing, beard shaking....
The marabout, meanwhile, glided on gradually and imperceptibly, serpent-like, or rather snail-like, till he was about ten yards distant from Richard's person, when, starting on his feet, he sprung forward with the bound of a tiger, stood at the King's back in less than an instant, and brandished aloft the cangiar, or poniard, which he had hidden in his sleeve.
"Now," said he, "I am going to cut off my own head with this cangiar; and as soon as it is severed from my body, let go the cane, and when my head flies up into the air, I will laugh, and you shall hear me."
When at last I did sit up, the girl was standing near me, with a sort of smile, holding out to me the cangiar in a pouring rain. I took it from her, and my doddering fingers dropped it into the stream.
I had at my girdle the little cangiar, with silver handle encrusted with coral, and curved blade six inches long, damascened in gold, and sharp as a razor; the blackest and the basest of all the devils of the Pit was whispering in my breast with calm persistence: 'Kill, kill and eat. Why I should have killed her I do not know. That question I now ask myself.
It may be supposed, then, Franz did not wait for a repetition of this permission, but took off the handkerchief, and found himself in the presence of a man from thirty-eight to forty years of age, dressed in a Tunisian costume that is to say, a red cap with a long blue silk tassel, a vest of black cloth embroidered with gold, pantaloons of deep red, large and full gaiters of the same color, embroidered with gold like the vest, and yellow slippers; he had a splendid cashmere round his waist, and a small sharp and crooked cangiar was passed through his girdle.
A credible person says, he once saw an Indian burn himself; and when he came near the pile, he drew out a cangiar, or sharp knife, with which he ripped himself open, and pulling out the lap of his liver with his left hand, cut off a piece of it with his cangiar, and gave it to one of his brothers, talking all the time with the most invincible contempt of death and torture, and at length leaped into the fire, in his passage to hell.
But closer inspection discerned in his turban that inestimable gem which was called by the poets the Sea of Light; the diamond on which his signet was engraved, and which he wore in a ring, was probably worth all the jewels of the English crown; and a sapphire which terminated the hilt of his cangiar was not of much inferior value.
The cangiar, snatched from my hand, fell near the girl's foot. I did not entirely lose consciousness, though, surely, the Powers no longer hide themselves from me, and their close contact is too intolerably rough and vigorous for a poor mortal man. During, I should think, three or four minutes, I lay so astounded under that bullying cry of wrath, that I could not move a finger.
Still the wrecks were there the red cap with the long blue silk tassel; the vest of black cloth embroidered with gold; the pantaloons of deep red; the large, full gaiters of the same color, embroidered with gold like the vest; the yellow slippers; the cachemire around his waist, and the small, crooked cangiar passed through his girdle. Zuleika gazed at him in amazement.
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