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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.
"Who calls me?" exclaimed the voice of a girl. And Halima came out of her door on the first terrace at the left, splendidly dressed for the dance in scarlet and gold, carrying two scarlet handkerchiefs in her hands, and with the hedgehog's foot dangling from her girdle of thin gold, studded with turquoises. Ben-Abid stood below in the court with Sadok by his side.
Ah, gentle knight, Jesu thank thee, and if ever my son, Alisander le Orphelin, live to be a knight, he shall have his father's doublet and his shirt with the bloody marks, and I shall give him such a charge that he shall remember it while he liveth. And therewithal Sadok departed from her, and either betook other to God.
Only, during the fast of Ramadan, between the rising and the going down of the sun, so long as a white thread could be distinguished from a black, he would not eat even a scorpion, because the tasting of food by day in that time is forbidden by the Prophet. When Ben-Abid struck on his door Sadok came forth, gibbering in his tangled beard, and half naked. "Oh, brother!" said Ben-Abid.
"Here is money if thou canst find me three scorpions. One of them must be a black scorpion." Sadok shot out his filthy claw, and there was fire in his eyes. But Ben-Abid's fingers closed round the money paper. "First thou must find the scorpions, and then thou must carry them with thee to the court of the dancers, walking at my side. For, as Allah lives, I will not touch them.
He sought out in the quarter of the freed negroes a certain man called Sadok, who dwelt alone. This Sadok was lean as a spectre, and had a skin like parchment. He was a renowned plunger in desert wells, and could remain beneath the water, men said, for a space of four minutes. But he could also do another thing. He could eat scorpions. And this he would do for a small sum of money.
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