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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Halima And The Scorpions, by Robert Hichens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Halima And The Scorpions
+       1905
+
+Author: Robert Hichens
+
+Release Date: November 8, 2007 [EBook #23414]
+Last Updated: December 17, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HALIMA AND THE SCORPIONS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HALIMA AND THE SCORPIONS
+
+By Robert Hichens
+
+Frederick A. Stokes Company Publishers
+
+Copyright, 1905
+
+
+In travelling about the world one collects a number of those trifles of
+all sorts, usually named “curiosities,” many of them worthless if it
+were not for the memories they recall. The other day I was clearing out
+a bureau before going abroad, and in one of the drawers I came across a
+hedgehog’s foot, set in silver, and hung upon a tarnished silver chain.
+I picked it up in the Sahara, and here is its history.
+
+*****
+
+Mohammed El Aïd Ben Ali Tidjani, marabout of Tamacine, is a great man in
+the Sahara Desert. His reputation for piety reaches as far as Tunis
+and Algiers, to the north of Africa, and to the uttermost parts of the
+Southern Desert, even to the land of the Touaregs. He dwells in a sacred
+village of dried mud and brick, surrounded by a high wall, pierced with
+loopholes, and ornamented with gates made of palm wood, and covered with
+sheets of iron. In his mansion, above the entrance of which is written
+“L’Entrée de Sidi Laïd,” are clocks innumerable, musical boxes, tables,
+chairs, sofas, and even framed photographs. Negro servants bow before
+him, wives, brothers, children, and obsequious hangers-on of various
+nationalities, black, bronze, and _café au lait_ in colour, offer him
+perpetual incense. Rich worshippers of the Prophet and the Prophet’s
+priests send him presents from afar; camels laden with barley, donkeys
+staggering beneath sacks of grain, ostrich plumes, silver ornaments,
+perfumes, red-eyed doves, gazelles whose tiny hoofs are decorated with
+gold-leaf or painted in bright colours. The tributes laid before the
+tomb of Cheikh Sidi El Hadj Ali ben Sidi El Hadj Aïssa are, doubtless,
+his perquisites as guardian of the saint. He dresses in silks of the
+tints of the autumn leaf, and carries in his mighty hand a staff hung
+with apple-green ribbons. And his smile is as the smile of the rising
+sun in an oleograph.
+
+This personage one day blessed the hedgehog’s foot I at present possess,
+and endowed it solemnly with miraculous curative properties. It would
+cure, he declared, all the physical ills that can beset a woman. Then
+he gave it into the hands of a great Agha, who was about to take a wife,
+accepted a tribute of dates, a grandfather’s clock from Paris, and a
+grinding organ of Barbary as a small acknowledgment of his generosity,
+and probably thought very little more about the matter.
+
+Now, in the course of time, it happened that the hedgehog’s foot came
+into the possession of a dancing-girl of Touggourt, called Halima. How
+Halima got hold of it I cannot say, nor does anyone in Touggourt exactly
+know, so far as I am aware. But, alas! even Aghas are sometimes human,
+and play pitch and toss with magical things. As Grand Dukes who go to
+disport themselves in Paris sometimes hie them incognito to the “Café
+de la Sorcière,” so do Aghas flit occasionally to Touggourt, and appear
+upon the high benches of the great dancing-house of the Ouled Nails in
+the outskirts of the city. And Halima was young and beautiful. Her
+eyes were large, and she wore a golden crown ornamented with very tall
+feathers. And she danced the dance of the hands and the dance of the
+fainting fit with great perfection. And the wives of Aghas have to put
+up with a good deal. However it was, one evening Halima danced with the
+hedgehog’s foot that had been blessed dangling from her jewelled girdle.
+And there was a great scandal in the city.
+
+For in the four quarters of Touggourt, the quarter of the Jews, of the
+foreigners, of the freed negroes, and of the citizens proper, it was
+known that the hedgehog’s foot had been blessed and endowed with magical
+powers by the mighty marabout of Tamacine.
+
+Halima herself affirmed it, standing at the front door of her terraced
+dwelling in the court, while the other dancers gathered round, looking
+like a troop of macaws in their feathers and their finery. With a brazen
+pride she boasted that she possessed something worth more than uncut
+rubies, carpets from Bagdad, and silken petticoats sewn with sequins.
+And the Ouled Naïls could not gainsay her. Indeed, they turned their
+huge, kohl-tinted eyes upon the relic with envy, and stretched their
+painted hands towards it as if to a god in prayer. But Halima would let
+no one touch it, and presently, taking from her bosom her immense door
+key, she retired to enshrine the foot in her box, studded with huge
+brass nails, such as stands by each dancer’s bed.
+
+And the scandal was very great in the city that such a precious thing
+should be between the hands of an Ouled Naïl, a girl of no repute, come
+thither in a palanquin on camel-back to earn her dowry, and who would
+depart into the sands of the south, laden with the gold wrung from the
+pockets of loose livers.
+
+Only Ben-Abid smiled gently when he heard of the matter.
+
+Ben-Abid belonged to the _Tribu des blancs_, and was the singer attached
+to the café of the smokers of the hashish. He it was who struck each
+evening a guitar made of goatskin backed by sand tortoise, and lifted up
+his voice in the song “Lalia”:
+
+   “Ladham Pacha who has left the heart of his enemies
+      trembling--
+         O Lalia! O Lalia!
+   The love of women is no more sweet to me after thy love.
+
+   Thy hand is white, and thy bracelets are of the purest
+      silver--
+   And I, Ladham Pacha, love thee, without thought of
+      what will come.
+         O Lalia! O Lalia!”
+
+The assembled smokers breathed out under the black ceiling their deep
+refrain of “Wur-ra-Wurra!” and Larbi, in his Zouave jacket and his
+tight, pleated skirt, threw back his small head, exposing his long brown
+throat, and danced like a tired phantom in a dream.
+
+Ben-Abid smiled, showing two rows of lustrous teeth.
+
+“Should Halima fall ill, the foot will not avail to cure her,” he
+murmured. “Ben Ali Tidjani’s blessing could never rest on an Ouled
+Naïl, who, like a little viper of the sand, has stolen into the Agha’s
+bosom, and filled his veins with subtle poison. She deems she has a
+treasure; but let her beware: that which would protect a woman who
+wears the veil will do naught for a creature who shows her face to the
+stranger, and dances by night for the Zouaves and for the Spahis who
+patrol the dunes.”
+
+And he struck his long fingers upon the goatskin of his instrument,
+while Kouïdah, the boy who played upon the little glasses and shook the
+tambourine of reeds, slipped forth to tell in the city what Ben-Abid had
+spoken.
+
+Halima was enraged when she heard of it, more especially as there were
+found many to believe Ben-Abid’s words. She stood before her room upon
+the terrace, where Zouaves were playing cards with the dancers in
+the sun, and she cursed him in a shrill voice, calling him son of a
+scorpion, and requesting that Allah would send great troubles upon
+his relations, even upon his aged grandmother. That the miraculous
+reputation of her treasure should be thus scouted, and herself insulted,
+vexed her to the soul.
+
+“Let the son of a camel with a swollen tongue dare to come to me and
+repeat what he has said!” she cried. “Let him come out from his lair in
+the café of the hashish smokers, and, as Allah is great, I will spit
+in his face. The reviler of women! The son of a scorpion! Cursed be
+his------”
+
+And then once more she desired evil to the grandmother of Ben-Abid, and
+to all his family. And the Zouaves and the dancers laughed over their
+card games. Indeed, the other dancers were merry, and not ill-pleased
+with Ben-Abid’s words. For even in the Sahara the women do not care that
+one of them should be exalted above the rest.
+
+Now, in Touggourt gossip is carried from house to house, as the sand
+grains are carried on the wind. Within an hour Ben-Abid heard that his
+grandmother had been cursed, and himself called son of a scorpion, by
+Halima. Kouïdah, the boy, ran on naked feet to tell him in the café of
+the hashish smokers. When he heard he smiled.
+
+“To-night I will go to the dancing-house, and speak with Halima,” he
+murmured. And then he plucked the guitar of goatskin that was ever in
+his hands, and sang softly of the joys of Ladham Pacha, half closing his
+eyes, and swaying his head from side to side.
+
+And Kouïdah, the boy, ran back across the camel market to tell in the
+court of the dancers the words of Ben-Abid.
+
+That night, when the nomads lit their brushwood fires in the market;
+when the Kabyle bakers, in their striped turbans and their close-fitting
+jerseys of yellow and of red, ran to and fro bearing the trays of flat,
+new-made loaves; when the dwarfs beat on the ground with their staffs to
+summon the mob to watch their antics; and the story-tellers put on their
+glasses, and sat them down at their boards between the candles; Ben-Abid
+went forth secretly from the hashish café wrapped in his burnous. 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. 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. Afterwards thou shalt have the money.”
+
+Sadok’s soul drew the shutters across his eyes. Then he led the way by
+tortuous alleys to an old and ruined wall of a _zgag_, in which there
+were as many holes as there are in a honeycomb. Here, as he knew,
+the scorpions loved to sleep. Thrusting his fingers here and there he
+presently drew forth three writhing reptiles. And one of them was black.
+He held them out, with a cry, to Ben-Abid.
+
+“The money! The money!” he shrieked.
+
+But Ben-Abid shrank back, shuddering.
+
+“Thou must bring them to the dancers’ court. Hide them well in thy
+garments that none may see them. Then thou shalt have the money.”
+
+Sadok hid the scorpions upon his shaven head beneath his turban, and
+they went by the dunes and the lonely ways to the café of the dancers.
+
+Already the pipers were playing, and many were assembled to see the
+women dance; but Ben-Abid and Sadok pushed through the throng, and
+passed across the café to the inner court, which is open to the air, and
+surrounded with earthen terraces on which, in tiers, open the rooms of
+the dancers, each with its own front door. This court is as a mighty
+rabbit warren, peopled with women instead of rabbits. Pale lights
+gleamed in many doorways, for the dancers were dressing and painting
+themselves for the dances of the body, of the hands, of the poignard,
+and of the handkerchief. Their shrill voices cried one to another, their
+heavy bracelets and necklets jingled, and the monstrous shadows of
+their crowned and feathered heads leaped and wavered on the yellow
+patches of light that lay before their doors.
+
+“Where is Halima?” cried Ben-Abid in a loud voice. “Let Halima come
+forth and spit in my face!”
+
+At the sound of his call many women ran to their doors, some half
+dressed, some fully attired, like Jezebels of the great desert.
+
+“It is Ben-Abid!” went up the cry of many voices. “It is Ben-Abid, who
+laughs to scorn the power of the hedgehog’s foot. It is the son of the
+camel with the swollen tongue. Halima, Halima, the child of the scorpion
+calls thee!”
+
+Kouïdah, the boy, who was ever about, ran barefoot from the court into
+the café to tell of the doings of Ben-Abid, and in a moment the people
+crowded in, Zouaves and Spahis, Arabs and negroes, nomads from the
+south, gipsies, jugglers, and Jews. There were, too, some from Tamacine,
+and these were of all the most intent.
+
+“Where is Halima?” went up the cry. “Where is Halima?”
+
+“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. The crowd
+pressed about him from behind.
+
+“Thou hast called me the son of a scorpion, Halima,” he said, in a loud
+voice. “Is it not true?”
+
+“It is true,” she answered, with a venomous smile of hatred. “And thou
+hast said that the hedgehog’s foot, blessed by the great marabout
+of Tamacine, would avail naught against the deadly sickness of a
+dancing-girl. Is it not true?”
+
+“It is true,” answered Ben-Abid.
+
+“Thou art a liar!” cried Halima.
+
+“And so art thou!” said Ben-Abid slowly.
+
+A deep murmur rose from the crowd, which pressed more closely beneath
+the terrace, staring up at the scarlet figure upon it.
+
+“If I am a liar thou canst not prove it!” cried Halima furiously. “I
+spit upon thee! I spit upon thee!”
+
+And she bent down her feathered head from the terrace and spat
+passionately in his face.
+
+Ben-Abid only laughed aloud.
+
+“I can prove that I have spoken the truth,” he said. “But if I am
+indeed the son of a scorpion, as thou sayest, let my brothers speak for
+me. Let my brothers declare to all the Sahara that the truth is in my
+mouth. Sadok, remove thy turban!”
+
+The plunger of the wells, with a frantic gesture, lifted his turban and
+discovered the three scorpions writhing upon his shaven head. Another,
+and longer, murmur went up from the crowd. But some shrank back and
+trembled, for the desert Arabs are much afraid of scorpions, which cause
+many deaths in the Sahara.
+
+“What is this?” cried Halima. “How can the scorpions speak for thee?”
+
+“They shall speak well,” said Ben-Abid. “Their voices cannot lie. Sleep
+to-night in thy room with these my brothers. Irena and Boria, the Golden
+Date and the Lotus Flower, shall watch beside thee. Guard in thy hand,
+or in thy breast, the hedgehog’s foot that thou sayest can preserve
+from every ill. If, in the evening of to-morrow, thou dancest before the
+soldiers, I will give thee fifty golden coins. But, if thou dancest not,
+the city shall know whether Ben-Abid is a truth-teller, and whether the
+blessings of the great marabout can rest upon such a woman as thou art.
+If thou refusest thou art afraid, and thy fear proveth that thou hast no
+faith in the magic treasure that dangles at thy girdle.”
+
+There was a moment of deep silence. Then, from the crowd burst forth the
+cry of many voices:
+
+“Put it to the proof! Ben-Abid speaks well. Put it to the proof, and may
+Allah judge between them.”
+
+Beneath the caked pigments on her face Halima had gone pale.
+
+“I will not,” she began.
+
+But the cries rose up again, and with them the shrill, twittering
+laughter of her envious rivals.
+
+“She has no faith in the marabout!” squawked one, who had a nose like an
+eagle’s beak.
+
+“She is a liar!” piped another, shaking out her silken petticoats as a
+bird shakes out its plumes.
+
+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.
+
+“Bring a lamp!” said Ben-Abid.
+
+And while Irena and Boria, the Golden Date and the Lotus Flower, held
+the lights, and the desert men crowded about him with the eyes of wolves
+that are near to starving, he counted forth the money on the terrace at
+Halima’s feet. And she gazed down at the glittering pieces as one that
+gazes upon a black fate.
+
+“And now set my brothers upon the maiden,” Ben-Abid said to Sadok,
+gathering up the money, and casting it again into the bag, which he tied
+once more with the cord.
+
+Halima did not move, but she looked upon the scorpion that was black,
+and her red lips trembled. Then she closed her hand upon the hedgehog’s
+foot that hung from her golden girdle, and shut her eyes beneath her
+ebon eyebrows.
+
+“Set my brothers upon her!” said Ben-Abid.
+
+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.
+
+That night I was in the café, and, hearing of all these things from
+Kouïdah, the boy, I went into the court, and gathered up the trinket
+which had brought a woman to the great silence. Next day I rode on
+horseback to Tamacine, asked to see the marabout and told him all the
+story.
+
+He listened, smiling like the rising sun in an oleograph, and twisting
+in his huge hands, that were tinted with the henna, the staff with the
+apple-green ribbons.
+
+When I came to the end I said:
+
+“O, holy marabout, tell me one thing.”
+
+“Allah is just. I listen.”
+
+“If the scorpions had slept with a veiled woman who held the hedgehog’s
+foot, how would it have been? Would the woman have died or lived?”
+
+The marabout did not answer. He looked at me calmly, as at a child
+who asks questions about the mysteries of life which only the old can
+understand.
+
+“These things,” he said at length, “are hidden from the unbeliever. You
+are a Roumi. How, then, should you learn such matters?”
+
+“But even the Roumi----”
+
+“In the desert there are mysteries,” continued the marabout, “which
+even the faithful must not seek to penetrate.”
+
+“Then it is useless to----”
+
+“It is very useless. It is as useless as to try to count the grains of
+the sand.”
+
+I said no more.
+
+Mohammed El Aïd Ben Ali Tidjani smiled once more, and beckoned to a
+negro attendant, who ran with a musical box, one of the gifts of the
+faithful.
+
+“This comes from Paris,” he said, with a spreading complacence.
+
+Then there was within the box a sounding click, and there stole forth a
+tinkling of Auber’s music to _Masaniello_, “Come o’er the moonlit sea!”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg’s Halima And The Scorpions, by Robert Hichens
+
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diff --git a/23414-0.zip b/23414-0.zip
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Halima And The Scorpions, by Robert Hichens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Halima And The Scorpions
+       1905
+
+Author: Robert Hichens
+
+Release Date: November 8, 2007 [EBook #23414]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HALIMA AND THE SCORPIONS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HALIMA AND THE SCORPIONS
+
+By Robert Hichens
+
+Frederick A. Stokes Company Publishers
+
+Copyright, 1905
+
+
+In travelling about the world one collects a number of those trifles of
+all sorts, usually named "curiosities," many of them worthless if it
+were not for the memories they recall. The other day I was clearing out
+a bureau before going abroad, and in one of the drawers I came across a
+hedgehog's foot, set in silver, and hung upon a tarnished silver chain.
+I picked it up in the Sahara, and here is its history.
+
+*****
+
+Mohammed El A�d Ben Ali Tidjani, marabout of Tamacine, is a great man in
+the Sahara Desert. His reputation for piety reaches as far as Tunis
+and Algiers, to the north of Africa, and to the uttermost parts of the
+Southern Desert, even to the land of the Touaregs. He dwells in a sacred
+village of dried mud and brick, surrounded by a high wall, pierced with
+loopholes, and ornamented with gates made of palm wood, and covered with
+sheets of iron. In his mansion, above the entrance of which is written
+"L'Entr�e de Sidi La�d," are clocks innumerable, musical boxes, tables,
+chairs, sofas, and even framed photographs. Negro servants bow before
+him, wives, brothers, children, and obsequious hangers-on of various
+nationalities, black, bronze, and _caf� au lait_ in colour, offer him
+perpetual incense. Rich worshippers of the Prophet and the Prophet's
+priests send him presents from afar; camels laden with barley, donkeys
+staggering beneath sacks of grain, ostrich plumes, silver ornaments,
+perfumes, red-eyed doves, gazelles whose tiny hoofs are decorated with
+gold-leaf or painted in bright colours. The tributes laid before the
+tomb of Cheikh Sidi El Hadj Ali ben Sidi El Hadj A�ssa are, doubtless,
+his perquisites as guardian of the saint. He dresses in silks of the
+tints of the autumn leaf, and carries in his mighty hand a staff hung
+with apple-green ribbons. And his smile is as the smile of the rising
+sun in an oleograph.
+
+This personage one day blessed the hedgehog's foot I at present possess,
+and endowed it solemnly with miraculous curative properties. It would
+cure, he declared, all the physical ills that can beset a woman. Then
+he gave it into the hands of a great Agha, who was about to take a wife,
+accepted a tribute of dates, a grandfather's clock from Paris, and a
+grinding organ of Barbary as a small acknowledgment of his generosity,
+and probably thought very little more about the matter.
+
+Now, in the course of time, it happened that the hedgehog's foot came
+into the possession of a dancing-girl of Touggourt, called Halima. How
+Halima got hold of it I cannot say, nor does anyone in Touggourt exactly
+know, so far as I am aware. But, alas! even Aghas are sometimes human,
+and play pitch and toss with magical things. As Grand Dukes who go to
+disport themselves in Paris sometimes hie them incognito to the "Caf�
+de la Sorci�re," so do Aghas flit occasionally to Touggourt, and appear
+upon the high benches of the great dancing-house of the Ouled Nails in
+the outskirts of the city. And Halima was young and beautiful. Her
+eyes were large, and she wore a golden crown ornamented with very tall
+feathers. And she danced the dance of the hands and the dance of the
+fainting fit with great perfection. And the wives of Aghas have to put
+up with a good deal. However it was, one evening Halima danced with the
+hedgehog's foot that had been blessed dangling from her jewelled girdle.
+And there was a great scandal in the city.
+
+For in the four quarters of Touggourt, the quarter of the Jews, of the
+foreigners, of the freed negroes, and of the citizens proper, it was
+known that the hedgehog's foot had been blessed and endowed with magical
+powers by the mighty marabout of Tamacine.
+
+Halima herself affirmed it, standing at the front door of her terraced
+dwelling in the court, while the other dancers gathered round, looking
+like a troop of macaws in their feathers and their finery. With a brazen
+pride she boasted that she possessed something worth more than uncut
+rubies, carpets from Bagdad, and silken petticoats sewn with sequins.
+And the Ouled Na�ls could not gainsay her. Indeed, they turned their
+huge, kohl-tinted eyes upon the relic with envy, and stretched their
+painted hands towards it as if to a god in prayer. But Halima would let
+no one touch it, and presently, taking from her bosom her immense door
+key, she retired to enshrine the foot in her box, studded with huge
+brass nails, such as stands by each dancer's bed.
+
+And the scandal was very great in the city that such a precious thing
+should be between the hands of an Ouled Na�l, a girl of no repute, come
+thither in a palanquin on camel-back to earn her dowry, and who would
+depart into the sands of the south, laden with the gold wrung from the
+pockets of loose livers.
+
+Only Ben-Abid smiled gently when he heard of the matter.
+
+Ben-Abid belonged to the _Tribu des blancs_, and was the singer attached
+to the caf� of the smokers of the hashish. He it was who struck each
+evening a guitar made of goatskin backed by sand tortoise, and lifted up
+his voice in the song "Lalia":
+
+   "Ladham Pacha who has left the heart of his enemies
+      trembling--
+         O Lalia! O Lalia!
+   The love of women is no more sweet to me after thy love.
+
+   Thy hand is white, and thy bracelets are of the purest
+      silver--
+   And I, Ladham Pacha, love thee, without thought of
+      what will come.
+         O Lalia! O Lalia!"
+
+The assembled smokers breathed out under the black ceiling their deep
+refrain of "Wur-ra-Wurra!" and Larbi, in his Zouave jacket and his
+tight, pleated skirt, threw back his small head, exposing his long brown
+throat, and danced like a tired phantom in a dream.
+
+Ben-Abid smiled, showing two rows of lustrous teeth.
+
+"Should Halima fall ill, the foot will not avail to cure her," he
+murmured. "Ben Ali Tidjani's blessing could never rest on an Ouled
+Na�l, who, like a little viper of the sand, has stolen into the Agha's
+bosom, and filled his veins with subtle poison. She deems she has a
+treasure; but let her beware: that which would protect a woman who
+wears the veil will do naught for a creature who shows her face to the
+stranger, and dances by night for the Zouaves and for the Spahis who
+patrol the dunes."
+
+And he struck his long fingers upon the goatskin of his instrument,
+while Kou�dah, the boy who played upon the little glasses and shook the
+tambourine of reeds, slipped forth to tell in the city what Ben-Abid had
+spoken.
+
+Halima was enraged when she heard of it, more especially as there were
+found many to believe Ben-Abid's words. She stood before her room upon
+the terrace, where Zouaves were playing cards with the dancers in
+the sun, and she cursed him in a shrill voice, calling him son of a
+scorpion, and requesting that Allah would send great troubles upon
+his relations, even upon his aged grandmother. That the miraculous
+reputation of her treasure should be thus scouted, and herself insulted,
+vexed her to the soul.
+
+"Let the son of a camel with a swollen tongue dare to come to me and
+repeat what he has said!" she cried. "Let him come out from his lair in
+the caf� of the hashish smokers, and, as Allah is great, I will spit
+in his face. The reviler of women! The son of a scorpion! Cursed be
+his------"
+
+And then once more she desired evil to the grandmother of Ben-Abid, and
+to all his family. And the Zouaves and the dancers laughed over their
+card games. Indeed, the other dancers were merry, and not ill-pleased
+with Ben-Abid's words. For even in the Sahara the women do not care that
+one of them should be exalted above the rest.
+
+Now, in Touggourt gossip is carried from house to house, as the sand
+grains are carried on the wind. Within an hour Ben-Abid heard that his
+grandmother had been cursed, and himself called son of a scorpion, by
+Halima. Kou�dah, the boy, ran on naked feet to tell him in the caf� of
+the hashish smokers. When he heard he smiled.
+
+"To-night I will go to the dancing-house, and speak with Halima," he
+murmured. And then he plucked the guitar of goatskin that was ever in
+his hands, and sang softly of the joys of Ladham Pacha, half closing his
+eyes, and swaying his head from side to side.
+
+And Kou�dah, the boy, ran back across the camel market to tell in the
+court of the dancers the words of Ben-Abid.
+
+That night, when the nomads lit their brushwood fires in the market;
+when the Kabyle bakers, in their striped turbans and their close-fitting
+jerseys of yellow and of red, ran to and fro bearing the trays of flat,
+new-made loaves; when the dwarfs beat on the ground with their staffs to
+summon the mob to watch their antics; and the story-tellers put on their
+glasses, and sat them down at their boards between the candles; Ben-Abid
+went forth secretly from the hashish caf� wrapped in his burnous. 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. 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. Afterwards thou shalt have the money."
+
+Sadok's soul drew the shutters across his eyes. Then he led the way by
+tortuous alleys to an old and ruined wall of a _zgag_, in which there
+were as many holes as there are in a honeycomb. Here, as he knew,
+the scorpions loved to sleep. Thrusting his fingers here and there he
+presently drew forth three writhing reptiles. And one of them was black.
+He held them out, with a cry, to Ben-Abid.
+
+"The money! The money!" he shrieked.
+
+But Ben-Abid shrank back, shuddering.
+
+"Thou must bring them to the dancers' court. Hide them well in thy
+garments that none may see them. Then thou shalt have the money."
+
+Sadok hid the scorpions upon his shaven head beneath his turban, and
+they went by the dunes and the lonely ways to the caf� of the dancers.
+
+Already the pipers were playing, and many were assembled to see the
+women dance; but Ben-Abid and Sadok pushed through the throng, and
+passed across the caf� to the inner court, which is open to the air, and
+surrounded with earthen terraces on which, in tiers, open the rooms of
+the dancers, each with its own front door. This court is as a mighty
+rabbit warren, peopled with women instead of rabbits. Pale lights
+gleamed in many doorways, for the dancers were dressing and painting
+themselves for the dances of the body, of the hands, of the poignard,
+and of the handkerchief. Their shrill voices cried one to another, their
+heavy bracelets and necklets jingled, and the monstrous shadows of
+their crowned and feathered heads leaped and wavered on the yellow
+patches of light that lay before their doors.
+
+"Where is Halima?" cried Ben-Abid in a loud voice. "Let Halima come
+forth and spit in my face!"
+
+At the sound of his call many women ran to their doors, some half
+dressed, some fully attired, like Jezebels of the great desert.
+
+"It is Ben-Abid!" went up the cry of many voices. "It is Ben-Abid, who
+laughs to scorn the power of the hedgehog's foot. It is the son of the
+camel with the swollen tongue. Halima, Halima, the child of the scorpion
+calls thee!"
+
+Kou�dah, the boy, who was ever about, ran barefoot from the court into
+the caf� to tell of the doings of Ben-Abid, and in a moment the people
+crowded in, Zouaves and Spahis, Arabs and negroes, nomads from the
+south, gipsies, jugglers, and Jews. There were, too, some from Tamacine,
+and these were of all the most intent.
+
+"Where is Halima?" went up the cry. "Where is Halima?"
+
+"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. The crowd
+pressed about him from behind.
+
+"Thou hast called me the son of a scorpion, Halima," he said, in a loud
+voice. "Is it not true?"
+
+"It is true," she answered, with a venomous smile of hatred. "And thou
+hast said that the hedgehog's foot, blessed by the great marabout
+of Tamacine, would avail naught against the deadly sickness of a
+dancing-girl. Is it not true?"
+
+"It is true," answered Ben-Abid.
+
+"Thou art a liar!" cried Halima.
+
+"And so art thou!" said Ben-Abid slowly.
+
+A deep murmur rose from the crowd, which pressed more closely beneath
+the terrace, staring up at the scarlet figure upon it.
+
+"If I am a liar thou canst not prove it!" cried Halima furiously. "I
+spit upon thee! I spit upon thee!"
+
+And she bent down her feathered head from the terrace and spat
+passionately in his face.
+
+Ben-Abid only laughed aloud.
+
+"I can prove that I have spoken the truth," he said. "But if I am
+indeed the son of a scorpion, as thou sayest, let my brothers speak for
+me. Let my brothers declare to all the Sahara that the truth is in my
+mouth. Sadok, remove thy turban!"
+
+The plunger of the wells, with a frantic gesture, lifted his turban and
+discovered the three scorpions writhing upon his shaven head. Another,
+and longer, murmur went up from the crowd. But some shrank back and
+trembled, for the desert Arabs are much afraid of scorpions, which cause
+many deaths in the Sahara.
+
+"What is this?" cried Halima. "How can the scorpions speak for thee?"
+
+"They shall speak well," said Ben-Abid. "Their voices cannot lie. Sleep
+to-night in thy room with these my brothers. Irena and Boria, the Golden
+Date and the Lotus Flower, shall watch beside thee. Guard in thy hand,
+or in thy breast, the hedgehog's foot that thou sayest can preserve
+from every ill. If, in the evening of to-morrow, thou dancest before the
+soldiers, I will give thee fifty golden coins. But, if thou dancest not,
+the city shall know whether Ben-Abid is a truth-teller, and whether the
+blessings of the great marabout can rest upon such a woman as thou art.
+If thou refusest thou art afraid, and thy fear proveth that thou hast no
+faith in the magic treasure that dangles at thy girdle."
+
+There was a moment of deep silence. Then, from the crowd burst forth the
+cry of many voices:
+
+"Put it to the proof! Ben-Abid speaks well. Put it to the proof, and may
+Allah judge between them."
+
+Beneath the caked pigments on her face Halima had gone pale.
+
+"I will not," she began.
+
+But the cries rose up again, and with them the shrill, twittering
+laughter of her envious rivals.
+
+"She has no faith in the marabout!" squawked one, who had a nose like an
+eagle's beak.
+
+"She is a liar!" piped another, shaking out her silken petticoats as a
+bird shakes out its plumes.
+
+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 caf� 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.
+
+"Bring a lamp!" said Ben-Abid.
+
+And while Irena and Boria, the Golden Date and the Lotus Flower, held
+the lights, and the desert men crowded about him with the eyes of wolves
+that are near to starving, he counted forth the money on the terrace at
+Halima's feet. And she gazed down at the glittering pieces as one that
+gazes upon a black fate.
+
+"And now set my brothers upon the maiden," Ben-Abid said to Sadok,
+gathering up the money, and casting it again into the bag, which he tied
+once more with the cord.
+
+Halima did not move, but she looked upon the scorpion that was black,
+and her red lips trembled. Then she closed her hand upon the hedgehog's
+foot that hung from her golden girdle, and shut her eyes beneath her
+ebon eyebrows.
+
+"Set my brothers upon her!" said Ben-Abid.
+
+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 caf� 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.
+
+That night I was in the caf�, and, hearing of all these things from
+Kou�dah, the boy, I went into the court, and gathered up the trinket
+which had brought a woman to the great silence. Next day I rode on
+horseback to Tamacine, asked to see the marabout and told him all the
+story.
+
+He listened, smiling like the rising sun in an oleograph, and twisting
+in his huge hands, that were tinted with the henna, the staff with the
+apple-green ribbons.
+
+When I came to the end I said:
+
+"O, holy marabout, tell me one thing."
+
+"Allah is just. I listen."
+
+"If the scorpions had slept with a veiled woman who held the hedgehog's
+foot, how would it have been? Would the woman have died or lived?"
+
+The marabout did not answer. He looked at me calmly, as at a child
+who asks questions about the mysteries of life which only the old can
+understand.
+
+"These things," he said at length, "are hidden from the unbeliever. You
+are a Roumi. How, then, should you learn such matters?"
+
+"But even the Roumi----"
+
+"In the desert there are mysteries," continued the marabout, "which
+even the faithful must not seek to penetrate."
+
+"Then it is useless to----"
+
+"It is very useless. It is as useless as to try to count the grains of
+the sand."
+
+I said no more.
+
+Mohammed El A�d Ben Ali Tidjani smiled once more, and beckoned to a
+negro attendant, who ran with a musical box, one of the gifts of the
+faithful.
+
+"This comes from Paris," he said, with a spreading complacence.
+
+Then there was within the box a sounding click, and there stole forth a
+tinkling of Auber's music to _Masaniello_, "Come o'er the moonlit sea!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Halima And The Scorpions, by Robert Hichens
+
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+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
+    <title>
+      Halima and the Scorpions, by Robert Hichens
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
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+               text-align: right;}
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+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Halima And The Scorpions, by Robert Hichens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Halima And The Scorpions
+       1905
+
+Author: Robert Hichens
+
+Release Date: November 8, 2007 [EBook #23414]
+Last Updated: December 17, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HALIMA AND THE SCORPIONS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      HALIMA AND THE SCORPIONS
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Robert Hichens
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Frederick A. Stokes Company Publishers
+    </h3>
+    <h4>
+      Copyright, 1905
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In travelling about the world one collects a number of those trifles of
+      all sorts, usually named &ldquo;curiosities,&rdquo; many of them worthless if it were
+      not for the memories they recall. The other day I was clearing out a
+      bureau before going abroad, and in one of the drawers I came across a
+      hedgehog&rsquo;s foot, set in silver, and hung upon a tarnished silver chain. I
+      picked it up in the Sahara, and here is its history.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      Mohammed El Aïd Ben Ali Tidjani, marabout of Tamacine, is a great man in
+      the Sahara Desert. His reputation for piety reaches as far as Tunis and
+      Algiers, to the north of Africa, and to the uttermost parts of the
+      Southern Desert, even to the land of the Touaregs. He dwells in a sacred
+      village of dried mud and brick, surrounded by a high wall, pierced with
+      loopholes, and ornamented with gates made of palm wood, and covered with
+      sheets of iron. In his mansion, above the entrance of which is written
+      &ldquo;L&rsquo;Entrée de Sidi Laïd,&rdquo; are clocks innumerable, musical boxes, tables,
+      chairs, sofas, and even framed photographs. Negro servants bow before him,
+      wives, brothers, children, and obsequious hangers-on of various
+      nationalities, black, bronze, and <i>café au lait</i> in colour, offer him
+      perpetual incense. Rich worshippers of the Prophet and the Prophet&rsquo;s
+      priests send him presents from afar; camels laden with barley, donkeys
+      staggering beneath sacks of grain, ostrich plumes, silver ornaments,
+      perfumes, red-eyed doves, gazelles whose tiny hoofs are decorated with
+      gold-leaf or painted in bright colours. The tributes laid before the tomb
+      of Cheikh Sidi El Hadj Ali ben Sidi El Hadj Aïssa are, doubtless, his
+      perquisites as guardian of the saint. He dresses in silks of the tints of
+      the autumn leaf, and carries in his mighty hand a staff hung with
+      apple-green ribbons. And his smile is as the smile of the rising sun in an
+      oleograph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This personage one day blessed the hedgehog&rsquo;s foot I at present possess,
+      and endowed it solemnly with miraculous curative properties. It would
+      cure, he declared, all the physical ills that can beset a woman. Then he
+      gave it into the hands of a great Agha, who was about to take a wife,
+      accepted a tribute of dates, a grandfather&rsquo;s clock from Paris, and a
+      grinding organ of Barbary as a small acknowledgment of his generosity, and
+      probably thought very little more about the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, in the course of time, it happened that the hedgehog&rsquo;s foot came into
+      the possession of a dancing-girl of Touggourt, called Halima. How Halima
+      got hold of it I cannot say, nor does anyone in Touggourt exactly know, so
+      far as I am aware. But, alas! even Aghas are sometimes human, and play
+      pitch and toss with magical things. As Grand Dukes who go to disport
+      themselves in Paris sometimes hie them incognito to the &ldquo;Café de la
+      Sorcière,&rdquo; so do Aghas flit occasionally to Touggourt, and appear upon the
+      high benches of the great dancing-house of the Ouled Nails in the
+      outskirts of the city. And Halima was young and beautiful. Her eyes were
+      large, and she wore a golden crown ornamented with very tall feathers. And
+      she danced the dance of the hands and the dance of the fainting fit with
+      great perfection. And the wives of Aghas have to put up with a good deal.
+      However it was, one evening Halima danced with the hedgehog&rsquo;s foot that
+      had been blessed dangling from her jewelled girdle. And there was a great
+      scandal in the city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For in the four quarters of Touggourt, the quarter of the Jews, of the
+      foreigners, of the freed negroes, and of the citizens proper, it was known
+      that the hedgehog&rsquo;s foot had been blessed and endowed with magical powers
+      by the mighty marabout of Tamacine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Halima herself affirmed it, standing at the front door of her terraced
+      dwelling in the court, while the other dancers gathered round, looking
+      like a troop of macaws in their feathers and their finery. With a brazen
+      pride she boasted that she possessed something worth more than uncut
+      rubies, carpets from Bagdad, and silken petticoats sewn with sequins. And
+      the Ouled Naïls could not gainsay her. Indeed, they turned their huge,
+      kohl-tinted eyes upon the relic with envy, and stretched their painted
+      hands towards it as if to a god in prayer. But Halima would let no one
+      touch it, and presently, taking from her bosom her immense door key, she
+      retired to enshrine the foot in her box, studded with huge brass nails,
+      such as stands by each dancer&rsquo;s bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the scandal was very great in the city that such a precious thing
+      should be between the hands of an Ouled Naïl, a girl of no repute, come
+      thither in a palanquin on camel-back to earn her dowry, and who would
+      depart into the sands of the south, laden with the gold wrung from the
+      pockets of loose livers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only Ben-Abid smiled gently when he heard of the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben-Abid belonged to the <i>Tribu des blancs</i>, and was the singer
+      attached to the café of the smokers of the hashish. He it was who struck
+      each evening a guitar made of goatskin backed by sand tortoise, and lifted
+      up his voice in the song &ldquo;Lalia&rdquo;:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   &ldquo;Ladham Pacha who has left the heart of his enemies
+      trembling&mdash;
+         O Lalia! O Lalia!
+   The love of women is no more sweet to me after thy love.
+
+   Thy hand is white, and thy bracelets are of the purest
+      silver&mdash;
+   And I, Ladham Pacha, love thee, without thought of
+      what will come.
+         O Lalia! O Lalia!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      The assembled smokers breathed out under the black ceiling their deep
+      refrain of &ldquo;Wur-ra-Wurra!&rdquo; and Larbi, in his Zouave jacket and his tight,
+      pleated skirt, threw back his small head, exposing his long brown throat,
+      and danced like a tired phantom in a dream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben-Abid smiled, showing two rows of lustrous teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Should Halima fall ill, the foot will not avail to cure her,&rdquo; he
+      murmured. &ldquo;Ben Ali Tidjani&rsquo;s blessing could never rest on an Ouled Naïl,
+      who, like a little viper of the sand, has stolen into the Agha&rsquo;s bosom,
+      and filled his veins with subtle poison. She deems she has a treasure; but
+      let her beware: that which would protect a woman who wears the veil will
+      do naught for a creature who shows her face to the stranger, and dances by
+      night for the Zouaves and for the Spahis who patrol the dunes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he struck his long fingers upon the goatskin of his instrument, while
+      Kouïdah, the boy who played upon the little glasses and shook the
+      tambourine of reeds, slipped forth to tell in the city what Ben-Abid had
+      spoken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Halima was enraged when she heard of it, more especially as there were
+      found many to believe Ben-Abid&rsquo;s words. She stood before her room upon the
+      terrace, where Zouaves were playing cards with the dancers in the sun, and
+      she cursed him in a shrill voice, calling him son of a scorpion, and
+      requesting that Allah would send great troubles upon his relations, even
+      upon his aged grandmother. That the miraculous reputation of her treasure
+      should be thus scouted, and herself insulted, vexed her to the soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let the son of a camel with a swollen tongue dare to come to me and
+      repeat what he has said!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Let him come out from his lair in
+      the café of the hashish smokers, and, as Allah is great, I will spit in
+      his face. The reviler of women! The son of a scorpion! Cursed be his&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then once more she desired evil to the grandmother of Ben-Abid, and to
+      all his family. And the Zouaves and the dancers laughed over their card
+      games. Indeed, the other dancers were merry, and not ill-pleased with
+      Ben-Abid&rsquo;s words. For even in the Sahara the women do not care that one of
+      them should be exalted above the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, in Touggourt gossip is carried from house to house, as the sand
+      grains are carried on the wind. Within an hour Ben-Abid heard that his
+      grandmother had been cursed, and himself called son of a scorpion, by
+      Halima. Kouïdah, the boy, ran on naked feet to tell him in the café of the
+      hashish smokers. When he heard he smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-night I will go to the dancing-house, and speak with Halima,&rdquo; he
+      murmured. And then he plucked the guitar of goatskin that was ever in his
+      hands, and sang softly of the joys of Ladham Pacha, half closing his eyes,
+      and swaying his head from side to side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Kouïdah, the boy, ran back across the camel market to tell in the
+      court of the dancers the words of Ben-Abid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night, when the nomads lit their brushwood fires in the market; when
+      the Kabyle bakers, in their striped turbans and their close-fitting
+      jerseys of yellow and of red, ran to and fro bearing the trays of flat,
+      new-made loaves; when the dwarfs beat on the ground with their staffs to
+      summon the mob to watch their antics; and the story-tellers put on their
+      glasses, and sat them down at their boards between the candles; Ben-Abid
+      went forth secretly from the hashish café wrapped in his burnous. He
+      sought out in the quarter of the freed negroes a certain man called Sadok,
+      who dwelt alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Ben-Abid struck on his door Sadok came forth, gibbering in his
+      tangled beard, and half naked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, brother!&rdquo; said Ben-Abid. &ldquo;Here is money if thou canst find me three
+      scorpions. One of them must be a black scorpion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sadok shot out his filthy claw, and there was fire in his eyes. But
+      Ben-Abid&rsquo;s fingers closed round the money paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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. Afterwards thou shalt have the money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sadok&rsquo;s soul drew the shutters across his eyes. Then he led the way by
+      tortuous alleys to an old and ruined wall of a <i>zgag</i>, in which there
+      were as many holes as there are in a honeycomb. Here, as he knew, the
+      scorpions loved to sleep. Thrusting his fingers here and there he
+      presently drew forth three writhing reptiles. And one of them was black.
+      He held them out, with a cry, to Ben-Abid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The money! The money!&rdquo; he shrieked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Ben-Abid shrank back, shuddering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou must bring them to the dancers&rsquo; court. Hide them well in thy
+      garments that none may see them. Then thou shalt have the money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sadok hid the scorpions upon his shaven head beneath his turban, and they
+      went by the dunes and the lonely ways to the café of the dancers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Already the pipers were playing, and many were assembled to see the women
+      dance; but Ben-Abid and Sadok pushed through the throng, and passed across
+      the café to the inner court, which is open to the air, and surrounded with
+      earthen terraces on which, in tiers, open the rooms of the dancers, each
+      with its own front door. This court is as a mighty rabbit warren, peopled
+      with women instead of rabbits. Pale lights gleamed in many doorways, for
+      the dancers were dressing and painting themselves for the dances of the
+      body, of the hands, of the poignard, and of the handkerchief. Their shrill
+      voices cried one to another, their heavy bracelets and necklets jingled,
+      and the monstrous shadows of their crowned and feathered heads leaped and
+      wavered on the yellow patches of light that lay before their doors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is Halima?&rdquo; cried Ben-Abid in a loud voice. &ldquo;Let Halima come forth
+      and spit in my face!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of his call many women ran to their doors, some half dressed,
+      some fully attired, like Jezebels of the great desert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is Ben-Abid!&rdquo; went up the cry of many voices. &ldquo;It is Ben-Abid, who
+      laughs to scorn the power of the hedgehog&rsquo;s foot. It is the son of the
+      camel with the swollen tongue. Halima, Halima, the child of the scorpion
+      calls thee!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kouïdah, the boy, who was ever about, ran barefoot from the court into the
+      café to tell of the doings of Ben-Abid, and in a moment the people crowded
+      in, Zouaves and Spahis, Arabs and negroes, nomads from the south, gipsies,
+      jugglers, and Jews. There were, too, some from Tamacine, and these were of
+      all the most intent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is Halima?&rdquo; went up the cry. &ldquo;Where is Halima?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who calls me?&rdquo; exclaimed the voice of a girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s foot dangling from her
+      girdle of thin gold, studded with turquoises.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben-Abid stood below in the court with Sadok by his side. The crowd
+      pressed about him from behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou hast called me the son of a scorpion, Halima,&rdquo; he said, in a loud
+      voice. &ldquo;Is it not true?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true,&rdquo; she answered, with a venomous smile of hatred. &ldquo;And thou
+      hast said that the hedgehog&rsquo;s foot, blessed by the great marabout of
+      Tamacine, would avail naught against the deadly sickness of a
+      dancing-girl. Is it not true?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true,&rdquo; answered Ben-Abid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou art a liar!&rdquo; cried Halima.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so art thou!&rdquo; said Ben-Abid slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A deep murmur rose from the crowd, which pressed more closely beneath the
+      terrace, staring up at the scarlet figure upon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I am a liar thou canst not prove it!&rdquo; cried Halima furiously. &ldquo;I spit
+      upon thee! I spit upon thee!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she bent down her feathered head from the terrace and spat
+      passionately in his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben-Abid only laughed aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can prove that I have spoken the truth,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But if I am indeed
+      the son of a scorpion, as thou sayest, let my brothers speak for me. Let
+      my brothers declare to all the Sahara that the truth is in my mouth.
+      Sadok, remove thy turban!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The plunger of the wells, with a frantic gesture, lifted his turban and
+      discovered the three scorpions writhing upon his shaven head. Another, and
+      longer, murmur went up from the crowd. But some shrank back and trembled,
+      for the desert Arabs are much afraid of scorpions, which cause many deaths
+      in the Sahara.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is this?&rdquo; cried Halima. &ldquo;How can the scorpions speak for thee?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They shall speak well,&rdquo; said Ben-Abid. &ldquo;Their voices cannot lie. Sleep
+      to-night in thy room with these my brothers. Irena and Boria, the Golden
+      Date and the Lotus Flower, shall watch beside thee. Guard in thy hand, or
+      in thy breast, the hedgehog&rsquo;s foot that thou sayest can preserve from
+      every ill. If, in the evening of to-morrow, thou dancest before the
+      soldiers, I will give thee fifty golden coins. But, if thou dancest not,
+      the city shall know whether Ben-Abid is a truth-teller, and whether the
+      blessings of the great marabout can rest upon such a woman as thou art. If
+      thou refusest thou art afraid, and thy fear proveth that thou hast no
+      faith in the magic treasure that dangles at thy girdle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a moment of deep silence. Then, from the crowd burst forth the
+      cry of many voices:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put it to the proof! Ben-Abid speaks well. Put it to the proof, and may
+      Allah judge between them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Beneath the caked pigments on her face Halima had gone pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will not,&rdquo; she began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the cries rose up again, and with them the shrill, twittering laughter
+      of her envious rivals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has no faith in the marabout!&rdquo; squawked one, who had a nose like an
+      eagle&rsquo;s beak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is a liar!&rdquo; piped another, shaking out her silken petticoats as a
+      bird shakes out its plumes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then the twitter of fierce laughter rose, shriek on shriek, and was
+      echoed more deeply by the crowd of watching men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me the scorpions!&rdquo; cried Halima passionately. &ldquo;I am not afraid!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her desert blood was up. Her fatalism&mdash;even in the women of the
+      Sahara it lurks&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait!&rdquo; cried Halima, as he came upon her, holding forth his handful of
+      writhing poison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her bosom heaved. Her lustrous eyes, heavy with kohl, shone like those of
+      a beast at bay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sadok stood still, with his naked arm outstretched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben-Abid put his hand beneath his burnous, and brought forth a bag tied at
+      the mouth with cord.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are here!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Jews! He has been to the Jews!&rdquo; cried the desert men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bring a lamp!&rdquo; said Ben-Abid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And while Irena and Boria, the Golden Date and the Lotus Flower, held the
+      lights, and the desert men crowded about him with the eyes of wolves that
+      are near to starving, he counted forth the money on the terrace at
+      Halima&rsquo;s feet. And she gazed down at the glittering pieces as one that
+      gazes upon a black fate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now set my brothers upon the maiden,&rdquo; Ben-Abid said to Sadok,
+      gathering up the money, and casting it again into the bag, which he tied
+      once more with the cord.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Halima did not move, but she looked upon the scorpion that was black, and
+      her red lips trembled. Then she closed her hand upon the hedgehog&rsquo;s foot
+      that hung from her golden girdle, and shut her eyes beneath her ebon
+      eyebrows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Set my brothers upon her!&rdquo; said Ben-Abid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The plunger of the wells sprang upon Halima, opened her scarlet bodice
+      roughly, plunged his claw into her swelling bosom, and withdrew it&mdash;empty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kiss her close, my brothers!&rdquo; whispered Ben-Abid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s voice screaming in his beard to Ben-Abid, &ldquo;My money!
+      Give me my money!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He snatched it with a howl, and went capering forth into the darkness.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Halima came not through the open doorway holding the scarlet
+      handkerchiefs above her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The jackals laughed as she went by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the hedgehog&rsquo;s foot was left lying upon the floor of her chamber. Not
+      one of the dancers would touch it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night I was in the café, and, hearing of all these things from
+      Kouïdah, the boy, I went into the court, and gathered up the trinket which
+      had brought a woman to the great silence. Next day I rode on horseback to
+      Tamacine, asked to see the marabout and told him all the story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He listened, smiling like the rising sun in an oleograph, and twisting in
+      his huge hands, that were tinted with the henna, the staff with the
+      apple-green ribbons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I came to the end I said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, holy marabout, tell me one thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allah is just. I listen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If the scorpions had slept with a veiled woman who held the hedgehog&rsquo;s
+      foot, how would it have been? Would the woman have died or lived?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The marabout did not answer. He looked at me calmly, as at a child who
+      asks questions about the mysteries of life which only the old can
+      understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These things,&rdquo; he said at length, &ldquo;are hidden from the unbeliever. You
+      are a Roumi. How, then, should you learn such matters?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But even the Roumi&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the desert there are mysteries,&rdquo; continued the marabout, &ldquo;which even
+      the faithful must not seek to penetrate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it is useless to&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very useless. It is as useless as to try to count the grains of the
+      sand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I said no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mohammed El Aïd Ben Ali Tidjani smiled once more, and beckoned to a negro
+      attendant, who ran with a musical box, one of the gifts of the faithful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This comes from Paris,&rdquo; he said, with a spreading complacence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there was within the box a sounding click, and there stole forth a
+      tinkling of Auber&rsquo;s music to <i>Masaniello</i>, &ldquo;Come o&rsquo;er the moonlit
+      sea!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
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+</html>
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+++ b/23414.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Halima And The Scorpions, by Robert Hichens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Halima And The Scorpions
+       1905
+
+Author: Robert Hichens
+
+Release Date: November 8, 2007 [EBook #23414]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HALIMA AND THE SCORPIONS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HALIMA AND THE SCORPIONS
+
+By Robert Hichens
+
+Frederick A. Stokes Company Publishers
+
+Copyright, 1905
+
+
+In travelling about the world one collects a number of those trifles of
+all sorts, usually named "curiosities," many of them worthless if it
+were not for the memories they recall. The other day I was clearing out
+a bureau before going abroad, and in one of the drawers I came across a
+hedgehog's foot, set in silver, and hung upon a tarnished silver chain.
+I picked it up in the Sahara, and here is its history.
+
+*****
+
+Mohammed El Aid Ben Ali Tidjani, marabout of Tamacine, is a great man in
+the Sahara Desert. His reputation for piety reaches as far as Tunis
+and Algiers, to the north of Africa, and to the uttermost parts of the
+Southern Desert, even to the land of the Touaregs. He dwells in a sacred
+village of dried mud and brick, surrounded by a high wall, pierced with
+loopholes, and ornamented with gates made of palm wood, and covered with
+sheets of iron. In his mansion, above the entrance of which is written
+"L'Entree de Sidi Laid," are clocks innumerable, musical boxes, tables,
+chairs, sofas, and even framed photographs. Negro servants bow before
+him, wives, brothers, children, and obsequious hangers-on of various
+nationalities, black, bronze, and _cafe au lait_ in colour, offer him
+perpetual incense. Rich worshippers of the Prophet and the Prophet's
+priests send him presents from afar; camels laden with barley, donkeys
+staggering beneath sacks of grain, ostrich plumes, silver ornaments,
+perfumes, red-eyed doves, gazelles whose tiny hoofs are decorated with
+gold-leaf or painted in bright colours. The tributes laid before the
+tomb of Cheikh Sidi El Hadj Ali ben Sidi El Hadj Aissa are, doubtless,
+his perquisites as guardian of the saint. He dresses in silks of the
+tints of the autumn leaf, and carries in his mighty hand a staff hung
+with apple-green ribbons. And his smile is as the smile of the rising
+sun in an oleograph.
+
+This personage one day blessed the hedgehog's foot I at present possess,
+and endowed it solemnly with miraculous curative properties. It would
+cure, he declared, all the physical ills that can beset a woman. Then
+he gave it into the hands of a great Agha, who was about to take a wife,
+accepted a tribute of dates, a grandfather's clock from Paris, and a
+grinding organ of Barbary as a small acknowledgment of his generosity,
+and probably thought very little more about the matter.
+
+Now, in the course of time, it happened that the hedgehog's foot came
+into the possession of a dancing-girl of Touggourt, called Halima. How
+Halima got hold of it I cannot say, nor does anyone in Touggourt exactly
+know, so far as I am aware. But, alas! even Aghas are sometimes human,
+and play pitch and toss with magical things. As Grand Dukes who go to
+disport themselves in Paris sometimes hie them incognito to the "Cafe
+de la Sorciere," so do Aghas flit occasionally to Touggourt, and appear
+upon the high benches of the great dancing-house of the Ouled Nails in
+the outskirts of the city. And Halima was young and beautiful. Her
+eyes were large, and she wore a golden crown ornamented with very tall
+feathers. And she danced the dance of the hands and the dance of the
+fainting fit with great perfection. And the wives of Aghas have to put
+up with a good deal. However it was, one evening Halima danced with the
+hedgehog's foot that had been blessed dangling from her jewelled girdle.
+And there was a great scandal in the city.
+
+For in the four quarters of Touggourt, the quarter of the Jews, of the
+foreigners, of the freed negroes, and of the citizens proper, it was
+known that the hedgehog's foot had been blessed and endowed with magical
+powers by the mighty marabout of Tamacine.
+
+Halima herself affirmed it, standing at the front door of her terraced
+dwelling in the court, while the other dancers gathered round, looking
+like a troop of macaws in their feathers and their finery. With a brazen
+pride she boasted that she possessed something worth more than uncut
+rubies, carpets from Bagdad, and silken petticoats sewn with sequins.
+And the Ouled Nails could not gainsay her. Indeed, they turned their
+huge, kohl-tinted eyes upon the relic with envy, and stretched their
+painted hands towards it as if to a god in prayer. But Halima would let
+no one touch it, and presently, taking from her bosom her immense door
+key, she retired to enshrine the foot in her box, studded with huge
+brass nails, such as stands by each dancer's bed.
+
+And the scandal was very great in the city that such a precious thing
+should be between the hands of an Ouled Nail, a girl of no repute, come
+thither in a palanquin on camel-back to earn her dowry, and who would
+depart into the sands of the south, laden with the gold wrung from the
+pockets of loose livers.
+
+Only Ben-Abid smiled gently when he heard of the matter.
+
+Ben-Abid belonged to the _Tribu des blancs_, and was the singer attached
+to the cafe of the smokers of the hashish. He it was who struck each
+evening a guitar made of goatskin backed by sand tortoise, and lifted up
+his voice in the song "Lalia":
+
+   "Ladham Pacha who has left the heart of his enemies
+      trembling--
+         O Lalia! O Lalia!
+   The love of women is no more sweet to me after thy love.
+
+   Thy hand is white, and thy bracelets are of the purest
+      silver--
+   And I, Ladham Pacha, love thee, without thought of
+      what will come.
+         O Lalia! O Lalia!"
+
+The assembled smokers breathed out under the black ceiling their deep
+refrain of "Wur-ra-Wurra!" and Larbi, in his Zouave jacket and his
+tight, pleated skirt, threw back his small head, exposing his long brown
+throat, and danced like a tired phantom in a dream.
+
+Ben-Abid smiled, showing two rows of lustrous teeth.
+
+"Should Halima fall ill, the foot will not avail to cure her," he
+murmured. "Ben Ali Tidjani's blessing could never rest on an Ouled
+Nail, who, like a little viper of the sand, has stolen into the Agha's
+bosom, and filled his veins with subtle poison. She deems she has a
+treasure; but let her beware: that which would protect a woman who
+wears the veil will do naught for a creature who shows her face to the
+stranger, and dances by night for the Zouaves and for the Spahis who
+patrol the dunes."
+
+And he struck his long fingers upon the goatskin of his instrument,
+while Kouidah, the boy who played upon the little glasses and shook the
+tambourine of reeds, slipped forth to tell in the city what Ben-Abid had
+spoken.
+
+Halima was enraged when she heard of it, more especially as there were
+found many to believe Ben-Abid's words. She stood before her room upon
+the terrace, where Zouaves were playing cards with the dancers in
+the sun, and she cursed him in a shrill voice, calling him son of a
+scorpion, and requesting that Allah would send great troubles upon
+his relations, even upon his aged grandmother. That the miraculous
+reputation of her treasure should be thus scouted, and herself insulted,
+vexed her to the soul.
+
+"Let the son of a camel with a swollen tongue dare to come to me and
+repeat what he has said!" she cried. "Let him come out from his lair in
+the cafe of the hashish smokers, and, as Allah is great, I will spit
+in his face. The reviler of women! The son of a scorpion! Cursed be
+his------"
+
+And then once more she desired evil to the grandmother of Ben-Abid, and
+to all his family. And the Zouaves and the dancers laughed over their
+card games. Indeed, the other dancers were merry, and not ill-pleased
+with Ben-Abid's words. For even in the Sahara the women do not care that
+one of them should be exalted above the rest.
+
+Now, in Touggourt gossip is carried from house to house, as the sand
+grains are carried on the wind. Within an hour Ben-Abid heard that his
+grandmother had been cursed, and himself called son of a scorpion, by
+Halima. Kouidah, the boy, ran on naked feet to tell him in the cafe of
+the hashish smokers. When he heard he smiled.
+
+"To-night I will go to the dancing-house, and speak with Halima," he
+murmured. And then he plucked the guitar of goatskin that was ever in
+his hands, and sang softly of the joys of Ladham Pacha, half closing his
+eyes, and swaying his head from side to side.
+
+And Kouidah, the boy, ran back across the camel market to tell in the
+court of the dancers the words of Ben-Abid.
+
+That night, when the nomads lit their brushwood fires in the market;
+when the Kabyle bakers, in their striped turbans and their close-fitting
+jerseys of yellow and of red, ran to and fro bearing the trays of flat,
+new-made loaves; when the dwarfs beat on the ground with their staffs to
+summon the mob to watch their antics; and the story-tellers put on their
+glasses, and sat them down at their boards between the candles; Ben-Abid
+went forth secretly from the hashish cafe wrapped in his burnous. 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. 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. Afterwards thou shalt have the money."
+
+Sadok's soul drew the shutters across his eyes. Then he led the way by
+tortuous alleys to an old and ruined wall of a _zgag_, in which there
+were as many holes as there are in a honeycomb. Here, as he knew,
+the scorpions loved to sleep. Thrusting his fingers here and there he
+presently drew forth three writhing reptiles. And one of them was black.
+He held them out, with a cry, to Ben-Abid.
+
+"The money! The money!" he shrieked.
+
+But Ben-Abid shrank back, shuddering.
+
+"Thou must bring them to the dancers' court. Hide them well in thy
+garments that none may see them. Then thou shalt have the money."
+
+Sadok hid the scorpions upon his shaven head beneath his turban, and
+they went by the dunes and the lonely ways to the cafe of the dancers.
+
+Already the pipers were playing, and many were assembled to see the
+women dance; but Ben-Abid and Sadok pushed through the throng, and
+passed across the cafe to the inner court, which is open to the air, and
+surrounded with earthen terraces on which, in tiers, open the rooms of
+the dancers, each with its own front door. This court is as a mighty
+rabbit warren, peopled with women instead of rabbits. Pale lights
+gleamed in many doorways, for the dancers were dressing and painting
+themselves for the dances of the body, of the hands, of the poignard,
+and of the handkerchief. Their shrill voices cried one to another, their
+heavy bracelets and necklets jingled, and the monstrous shadows of
+their crowned and feathered heads leaped and wavered on the yellow
+patches of light that lay before their doors.
+
+"Where is Halima?" cried Ben-Abid in a loud voice. "Let Halima come
+forth and spit in my face!"
+
+At the sound of his call many women ran to their doors, some half
+dressed, some fully attired, like Jezebels of the great desert.
+
+"It is Ben-Abid!" went up the cry of many voices. "It is Ben-Abid, who
+laughs to scorn the power of the hedgehog's foot. It is the son of the
+camel with the swollen tongue. Halima, Halima, the child of the scorpion
+calls thee!"
+
+Kouidah, the boy, who was ever about, ran barefoot from the court into
+the cafe to tell of the doings of Ben-Abid, and in a moment the people
+crowded in, Zouaves and Spahis, Arabs and negroes, nomads from the
+south, gipsies, jugglers, and Jews. There were, too, some from Tamacine,
+and these were of all the most intent.
+
+"Where is Halima?" went up the cry. "Where is Halima?"
+
+"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. The crowd
+pressed about him from behind.
+
+"Thou hast called me the son of a scorpion, Halima," he said, in a loud
+voice. "Is it not true?"
+
+"It is true," she answered, with a venomous smile of hatred. "And thou
+hast said that the hedgehog's foot, blessed by the great marabout
+of Tamacine, would avail naught against the deadly sickness of a
+dancing-girl. Is it not true?"
+
+"It is true," answered Ben-Abid.
+
+"Thou art a liar!" cried Halima.
+
+"And so art thou!" said Ben-Abid slowly.
+
+A deep murmur rose from the crowd, which pressed more closely beneath
+the terrace, staring up at the scarlet figure upon it.
+
+"If I am a liar thou canst not prove it!" cried Halima furiously. "I
+spit upon thee! I spit upon thee!"
+
+And she bent down her feathered head from the terrace and spat
+passionately in his face.
+
+Ben-Abid only laughed aloud.
+
+"I can prove that I have spoken the truth," he said. "But if I am
+indeed the son of a scorpion, as thou sayest, let my brothers speak for
+me. Let my brothers declare to all the Sahara that the truth is in my
+mouth. Sadok, remove thy turban!"
+
+The plunger of the wells, with a frantic gesture, lifted his turban and
+discovered the three scorpions writhing upon his shaven head. Another,
+and longer, murmur went up from the crowd. But some shrank back and
+trembled, for the desert Arabs are much afraid of scorpions, which cause
+many deaths in the Sahara.
+
+"What is this?" cried Halima. "How can the scorpions speak for thee?"
+
+"They shall speak well," said Ben-Abid. "Their voices cannot lie. Sleep
+to-night in thy room with these my brothers. Irena and Boria, the Golden
+Date and the Lotus Flower, shall watch beside thee. Guard in thy hand,
+or in thy breast, the hedgehog's foot that thou sayest can preserve
+from every ill. If, in the evening of to-morrow, thou dancest before the
+soldiers, I will give thee fifty golden coins. But, if thou dancest not,
+the city shall know whether Ben-Abid is a truth-teller, and whether the
+blessings of the great marabout can rest upon such a woman as thou art.
+If thou refusest thou art afraid, and thy fear proveth that thou hast no
+faith in the magic treasure that dangles at thy girdle."
+
+There was a moment of deep silence. Then, from the crowd burst forth the
+cry of many voices:
+
+"Put it to the proof! Ben-Abid speaks well. Put it to the proof, and may
+Allah judge between them."
+
+Beneath the caked pigments on her face Halima had gone pale.
+
+"I will not," she began.
+
+But the cries rose up again, and with them the shrill, twittering
+laughter of her envious rivals.
+
+"She has no faith in the marabout!" squawked one, who had a nose like an
+eagle's beak.
+
+"She is a liar!" piped another, shaking out her silken petticoats as a
+bird shakes out its plumes.
+
+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 cafe 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.
+
+"Bring a lamp!" said Ben-Abid.
+
+And while Irena and Boria, the Golden Date and the Lotus Flower, held
+the lights, and the desert men crowded about him with the eyes of wolves
+that are near to starving, he counted forth the money on the terrace at
+Halima's feet. And she gazed down at the glittering pieces as one that
+gazes upon a black fate.
+
+"And now set my brothers upon the maiden," Ben-Abid said to Sadok,
+gathering up the money, and casting it again into the bag, which he tied
+once more with the cord.
+
+Halima did not move, but she looked upon the scorpion that was black,
+and her red lips trembled. Then she closed her hand upon the hedgehog's
+foot that hung from her golden girdle, and shut her eyes beneath her
+ebon eyebrows.
+
+"Set my brothers upon her!" said Ben-Abid.
+
+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 cafe 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.
+
+That night I was in the cafe, and, hearing of all these things from
+Kouidah, the boy, I went into the court, and gathered up the trinket
+which had brought a woman to the great silence. Next day I rode on
+horseback to Tamacine, asked to see the marabout and told him all the
+story.
+
+He listened, smiling like the rising sun in an oleograph, and twisting
+in his huge hands, that were tinted with the henna, the staff with the
+apple-green ribbons.
+
+When I came to the end I said:
+
+"O, holy marabout, tell me one thing."
+
+"Allah is just. I listen."
+
+"If the scorpions had slept with a veiled woman who held the hedgehog's
+foot, how would it have been? Would the woman have died or lived?"
+
+The marabout did not answer. He looked at me calmly, as at a child
+who asks questions about the mysteries of life which only the old can
+understand.
+
+"These things," he said at length, "are hidden from the unbeliever. You
+are a Roumi. How, then, should you learn such matters?"
+
+"But even the Roumi----"
+
+"In the desert there are mysteries," continued the marabout, "which
+even the faithful must not seek to penetrate."
+
+"Then it is useless to----"
+
+"It is very useless. It is as useless as to try to count the grains of
+the sand."
+
+I said no more.
+
+Mohammed El Aid Ben Ali Tidjani smiled once more, and beckoned to a
+negro attendant, who ran with a musical box, one of the gifts of the
+faithful.
+
+"This comes from Paris," he said, with a spreading complacence.
+
+Then there was within the box a sounding click, and there stole forth a
+tinkling of Auber's music to _Masaniello_, "Come o'er the moonlit sea!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Halima And The Scorpions, by Robert Hichens
+
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diff --git a/23414.zip b/23414.zip
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #23414 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23414)
diff --git a/old/23414-h.htm.2021-01-25 b/old/23414-h.htm.2021-01-25
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Halima and the Scorpions, by Robert Hichens
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
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+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Halima And The Scorpions, by Robert Hichens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Halima And The Scorpions
+       1905
+
+Author: Robert Hichens
+
+Release Date: November 8, 2007 [EBook #23414]
+Last Updated: December 17, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HALIMA AND THE SCORPIONS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      HALIMA AND THE SCORPIONS
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Robert Hichens
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Frederick A. Stokes Company Publishers
+    </h3>
+    <h4>
+      Copyright, 1905
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In travelling about the world one collects a number of those trifles of
+      all sorts, usually named &ldquo;curiosities,&rdquo; many of them worthless if it were
+      not for the memories they recall. The other day I was clearing out a
+      bureau before going abroad, and in one of the drawers I came across a
+      hedgehog&rsquo;s foot, set in silver, and hung upon a tarnished silver chain. I
+      picked it up in the Sahara, and here is its history.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      Mohammed El Aïd Ben Ali Tidjani, marabout of Tamacine, is a great man in
+      the Sahara Desert. His reputation for piety reaches as far as Tunis and
+      Algiers, to the north of Africa, and to the uttermost parts of the
+      Southern Desert, even to the land of the Touaregs. He dwells in a sacred
+      village of dried mud and brick, surrounded by a high wall, pierced with
+      loopholes, and ornamented with gates made of palm wood, and covered with
+      sheets of iron. In his mansion, above the entrance of which is written
+      &ldquo;L&rsquo;Entrée de Sidi Laïd,&rdquo; are clocks innumerable, musical boxes, tables,
+      chairs, sofas, and even framed photographs. Negro servants bow before him,
+      wives, brothers, children, and obsequious hangers-on of various
+      nationalities, black, bronze, and <i>café au lait</i> in colour, offer him
+      perpetual incense. Rich worshippers of the Prophet and the Prophet&rsquo;s
+      priests send him presents from afar; camels laden with barley, donkeys
+      staggering beneath sacks of grain, ostrich plumes, silver ornaments,
+      perfumes, red-eyed doves, gazelles whose tiny hoofs are decorated with
+      gold-leaf or painted in bright colours. The tributes laid before the tomb
+      of Cheikh Sidi El Hadj Ali ben Sidi El Hadj Aïssa are, doubtless, his
+      perquisites as guardian of the saint. He dresses in silks of the tints of
+      the autumn leaf, and carries in his mighty hand a staff hung with
+      apple-green ribbons. And his smile is as the smile of the rising sun in an
+      oleograph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This personage one day blessed the hedgehog&rsquo;s foot I at present possess,
+      and endowed it solemnly with miraculous curative properties. It would
+      cure, he declared, all the physical ills that can beset a woman. Then he
+      gave it into the hands of a great Agha, who was about to take a wife,
+      accepted a tribute of dates, a grandfather&rsquo;s clock from Paris, and a
+      grinding organ of Barbary as a small acknowledgment of his generosity, and
+      probably thought very little more about the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, in the course of time, it happened that the hedgehog&rsquo;s foot came into
+      the possession of a dancing-girl of Touggourt, called Halima. How Halima
+      got hold of it I cannot say, nor does anyone in Touggourt exactly know, so
+      far as I am aware. But, alas! even Aghas are sometimes human, and play
+      pitch and toss with magical things. As Grand Dukes who go to disport
+      themselves in Paris sometimes hie them incognito to the &ldquo;Café de la
+      Sorcière,&rdquo; so do Aghas flit occasionally to Touggourt, and appear upon the
+      high benches of the great dancing-house of the Ouled Nails in the
+      outskirts of the city. And Halima was young and beautiful. Her eyes were
+      large, and she wore a golden crown ornamented with very tall feathers. And
+      she danced the dance of the hands and the dance of the fainting fit with
+      great perfection. And the wives of Aghas have to put up with a good deal.
+      However it was, one evening Halima danced with the hedgehog&rsquo;s foot that
+      had been blessed dangling from her jewelled girdle. And there was a great
+      scandal in the city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For in the four quarters of Touggourt, the quarter of the Jews, of the
+      foreigners, of the freed negroes, and of the citizens proper, it was known
+      that the hedgehog&rsquo;s foot had been blessed and endowed with magical powers
+      by the mighty marabout of Tamacine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Halima herself affirmed it, standing at the front door of her terraced
+      dwelling in the court, while the other dancers gathered round, looking
+      like a troop of macaws in their feathers and their finery. With a brazen
+      pride she boasted that she possessed something worth more than uncut
+      rubies, carpets from Bagdad, and silken petticoats sewn with sequins. And
+      the Ouled Naïls could not gainsay her. Indeed, they turned their huge,
+      kohl-tinted eyes upon the relic with envy, and stretched their painted
+      hands towards it as if to a god in prayer. But Halima would let no one
+      touch it, and presently, taking from her bosom her immense door key, she
+      retired to enshrine the foot in her box, studded with huge brass nails,
+      such as stands by each dancer&rsquo;s bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the scandal was very great in the city that such a precious thing
+      should be between the hands of an Ouled Naïl, a girl of no repute, come
+      thither in a palanquin on camel-back to earn her dowry, and who would
+      depart into the sands of the south, laden with the gold wrung from the
+      pockets of loose livers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only Ben-Abid smiled gently when he heard of the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben-Abid belonged to the <i>Tribu des blancs</i>, and was the singer
+      attached to the café of the smokers of the hashish. He it was who struck
+      each evening a guitar made of goatskin backed by sand tortoise, and lifted
+      up his voice in the song &ldquo;Lalia&rdquo;:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   &ldquo;Ladham Pacha who has left the heart of his enemies
+      trembling&mdash;
+         O Lalia! O Lalia!
+   The love of women is no more sweet to me after thy love.
+
+   Thy hand is white, and thy bracelets are of the purest
+      silver&mdash;
+   And I, Ladham Pacha, love thee, without thought of
+      what will come.
+         O Lalia! O Lalia!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      The assembled smokers breathed out under the black ceiling their deep
+      refrain of &ldquo;Wur-ra-Wurra!&rdquo; and Larbi, in his Zouave jacket and his tight,
+      pleated skirt, threw back his small head, exposing his long brown throat,
+      and danced like a tired phantom in a dream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben-Abid smiled, showing two rows of lustrous teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Should Halima fall ill, the foot will not avail to cure her,&rdquo; he
+      murmured. &ldquo;Ben Ali Tidjani&rsquo;s blessing could never rest on an Ouled Naïl,
+      who, like a little viper of the sand, has stolen into the Agha&rsquo;s bosom,
+      and filled his veins with subtle poison. She deems she has a treasure; but
+      let her beware: that which would protect a woman who wears the veil will
+      do naught for a creature who shows her face to the stranger, and dances by
+      night for the Zouaves and for the Spahis who patrol the dunes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he struck his long fingers upon the goatskin of his instrument, while
+      Kouïdah, the boy who played upon the little glasses and shook the
+      tambourine of reeds, slipped forth to tell in the city what Ben-Abid had
+      spoken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Halima was enraged when she heard of it, more especially as there were
+      found many to believe Ben-Abid&rsquo;s words. She stood before her room upon the
+      terrace, where Zouaves were playing cards with the dancers in the sun, and
+      she cursed him in a shrill voice, calling him son of a scorpion, and
+      requesting that Allah would send great troubles upon his relations, even
+      upon his aged grandmother. That the miraculous reputation of her treasure
+      should be thus scouted, and herself insulted, vexed her to the soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let the son of a camel with a swollen tongue dare to come to me and
+      repeat what he has said!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Let him come out from his lair in
+      the café of the hashish smokers, and, as Allah is great, I will spit in
+      his face. The reviler of women! The son of a scorpion! Cursed be his&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then once more she desired evil to the grandmother of Ben-Abid, and to
+      all his family. And the Zouaves and the dancers laughed over their card
+      games. Indeed, the other dancers were merry, and not ill-pleased with
+      Ben-Abid&rsquo;s words. For even in the Sahara the women do not care that one of
+      them should be exalted above the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, in Touggourt gossip is carried from house to house, as the sand
+      grains are carried on the wind. Within an hour Ben-Abid heard that his
+      grandmother had been cursed, and himself called son of a scorpion, by
+      Halima. Kouïdah, the boy, ran on naked feet to tell him in the café of the
+      hashish smokers. When he heard he smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-night I will go to the dancing-house, and speak with Halima,&rdquo; he
+      murmured. And then he plucked the guitar of goatskin that was ever in his
+      hands, and sang softly of the joys of Ladham Pacha, half closing his eyes,
+      and swaying his head from side to side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Kouïdah, the boy, ran back across the camel market to tell in the
+      court of the dancers the words of Ben-Abid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night, when the nomads lit their brushwood fires in the market; when
+      the Kabyle bakers, in their striped turbans and their close-fitting
+      jerseys of yellow and of red, ran to and fro bearing the trays of flat,
+      new-made loaves; when the dwarfs beat on the ground with their staffs to
+      summon the mob to watch their antics; and the story-tellers put on their
+      glasses, and sat them down at their boards between the candles; Ben-Abid
+      went forth secretly from the hashish café wrapped in his burnous. He
+      sought out in the quarter of the freed negroes a certain man called Sadok,
+      who dwelt alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Ben-Abid struck on his door Sadok came forth, gibbering in his
+      tangled beard, and half naked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, brother!&rdquo; said Ben-Abid. &ldquo;Here is money if thou canst find me three
+      scorpions. One of them must be a black scorpion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sadok shot out his filthy claw, and there was fire in his eyes. But
+      Ben-Abid&rsquo;s fingers closed round the money paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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. Afterwards thou shalt have the money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sadok&rsquo;s soul drew the shutters across his eyes. Then he led the way by
+      tortuous alleys to an old and ruined wall of a <i>zgag</i>, in which there
+      were as many holes as there are in a honeycomb. Here, as he knew, the
+      scorpions loved to sleep. Thrusting his fingers here and there he
+      presently drew forth three writhing reptiles. And one of them was black.
+      He held them out, with a cry, to Ben-Abid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The money! The money!&rdquo; he shrieked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Ben-Abid shrank back, shuddering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou must bring them to the dancers&rsquo; court. Hide them well in thy
+      garments that none may see them. Then thou shalt have the money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sadok hid the scorpions upon his shaven head beneath his turban, and they
+      went by the dunes and the lonely ways to the café of the dancers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Already the pipers were playing, and many were assembled to see the women
+      dance; but Ben-Abid and Sadok pushed through the throng, and passed across
+      the café to the inner court, which is open to the air, and surrounded with
+      earthen terraces on which, in tiers, open the rooms of the dancers, each
+      with its own front door. This court is as a mighty rabbit warren, peopled
+      with women instead of rabbits. Pale lights gleamed in many doorways, for
+      the dancers were dressing and painting themselves for the dances of the
+      body, of the hands, of the poignard, and of the handkerchief. Their shrill
+      voices cried one to another, their heavy bracelets and necklets jingled,
+      and the monstrous shadows of their crowned and feathered heads leaped and
+      wavered on the yellow patches of light that lay before their doors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is Halima?&rdquo; cried Ben-Abid in a loud voice. &ldquo;Let Halima come forth
+      and spit in my face!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of his call many women ran to their doors, some half dressed,
+      some fully attired, like Jezebels of the great desert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is Ben-Abid!&rdquo; went up the cry of many voices. &ldquo;It is Ben-Abid, who
+      laughs to scorn the power of the hedgehog&rsquo;s foot. It is the son of the
+      camel with the swollen tongue. Halima, Halima, the child of the scorpion
+      calls thee!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kouïdah, the boy, who was ever about, ran barefoot from the court into the
+      café to tell of the doings of Ben-Abid, and in a moment the people crowded
+      in, Zouaves and Spahis, Arabs and negroes, nomads from the south, gipsies,
+      jugglers, and Jews. There were, too, some from Tamacine, and these were of
+      all the most intent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is Halima?&rdquo; went up the cry. &ldquo;Where is Halima?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who calls me?&rdquo; exclaimed the voice of a girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s foot dangling from her
+      girdle of thin gold, studded with turquoises.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben-Abid stood below in the court with Sadok by his side. The crowd
+      pressed about him from behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou hast called me the son of a scorpion, Halima,&rdquo; he said, in a loud
+      voice. &ldquo;Is it not true?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true,&rdquo; she answered, with a venomous smile of hatred. &ldquo;And thou
+      hast said that the hedgehog&rsquo;s foot, blessed by the great marabout of
+      Tamacine, would avail naught against the deadly sickness of a
+      dancing-girl. Is it not true?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true,&rdquo; answered Ben-Abid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou art a liar!&rdquo; cried Halima.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so art thou!&rdquo; said Ben-Abid slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A deep murmur rose from the crowd, which pressed more closely beneath the
+      terrace, staring up at the scarlet figure upon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I am a liar thou canst not prove it!&rdquo; cried Halima furiously. &ldquo;I spit
+      upon thee! I spit upon thee!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she bent down her feathered head from the terrace and spat
+      passionately in his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben-Abid only laughed aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can prove that I have spoken the truth,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But if I am indeed
+      the son of a scorpion, as thou sayest, let my brothers speak for me. Let
+      my brothers declare to all the Sahara that the truth is in my mouth.
+      Sadok, remove thy turban!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The plunger of the wells, with a frantic gesture, lifted his turban and
+      discovered the three scorpions writhing upon his shaven head. Another, and
+      longer, murmur went up from the crowd. But some shrank back and trembled,
+      for the desert Arabs are much afraid of scorpions, which cause many deaths
+      in the Sahara.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is this?&rdquo; cried Halima. &ldquo;How can the scorpions speak for thee?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They shall speak well,&rdquo; said Ben-Abid. &ldquo;Their voices cannot lie. Sleep
+      to-night in thy room with these my brothers. Irena and Boria, the Golden
+      Date and the Lotus Flower, shall watch beside thee. Guard in thy hand, or
+      in thy breast, the hedgehog&rsquo;s foot that thou sayest can preserve from
+      every ill. If, in the evening of to-morrow, thou dancest before the
+      soldiers, I will give thee fifty golden coins. But, if thou dancest not,
+      the city shall know whether Ben-Abid is a truth-teller, and whether the
+      blessings of the great marabout can rest upon such a woman as thou art. If
+      thou refusest thou art afraid, and thy fear proveth that thou hast no
+      faith in the magic treasure that dangles at thy girdle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a moment of deep silence. Then, from the crowd burst forth the
+      cry of many voices:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put it to the proof! Ben-Abid speaks well. Put it to the proof, and may
+      Allah judge between them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Beneath the caked pigments on her face Halima had gone pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will not,&rdquo; she began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the cries rose up again, and with them the shrill, twittering laughter
+      of her envious rivals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has no faith in the marabout!&rdquo; squawked one, who had a nose like an
+      eagle&rsquo;s beak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is a liar!&rdquo; piped another, shaking out her silken petticoats as a
+      bird shakes out its plumes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then the twitter of fierce laughter rose, shriek on shriek, and was
+      echoed more deeply by the crowd of watching men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me the scorpions!&rdquo; cried Halima passionately. &ldquo;I am not afraid!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her desert blood was up. Her fatalism&mdash;even in the women of the
+      Sahara it lurks&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait!&rdquo; cried Halima, as he came upon her, holding forth his handful of
+      writhing poison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her bosom heaved. Her lustrous eyes, heavy with kohl, shone like those of
+      a beast at bay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sadok stood still, with his naked arm outstretched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben-Abid put his hand beneath his burnous, and brought forth a bag tied at
+      the mouth with cord.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are here!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Jews! He has been to the Jews!&rdquo; cried the desert men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bring a lamp!&rdquo; said Ben-Abid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And while Irena and Boria, the Golden Date and the Lotus Flower, held the
+      lights, and the desert men crowded about him with the eyes of wolves that
+      are near to starving, he counted forth the money on the terrace at
+      Halima&rsquo;s feet. And she gazed down at the glittering pieces as one that
+      gazes upon a black fate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now set my brothers upon the maiden,&rdquo; Ben-Abid said to Sadok,
+      gathering up the money, and casting it again into the bag, which he tied
+      once more with the cord.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Halima did not move, but she looked upon the scorpion that was black, and
+      her red lips trembled. Then she closed her hand upon the hedgehog&rsquo;s foot
+      that hung from her golden girdle, and shut her eyes beneath her ebon
+      eyebrows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Set my brothers upon her!&rdquo; said Ben-Abid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The plunger of the wells sprang upon Halima, opened her scarlet bodice
+      roughly, plunged his claw into her swelling bosom, and withdrew it&mdash;empty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kiss her close, my brothers!&rdquo; whispered Ben-Abid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s voice screaming in his beard to Ben-Abid, &ldquo;My money!
+      Give me my money!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He snatched it with a howl, and went capering forth into the darkness.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Halima came not through the open doorway holding the scarlet
+      handkerchiefs above her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The jackals laughed as she went by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the hedgehog&rsquo;s foot was left lying upon the floor of her chamber. Not
+      one of the dancers would touch it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night I was in the café, and, hearing of all these things from
+      Kouïdah, the boy, I went into the court, and gathered up the trinket which
+      had brought a woman to the great silence. Next day I rode on horseback to
+      Tamacine, asked to see the marabout and told him all the story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He listened, smiling like the rising sun in an oleograph, and twisting in
+      his huge hands, that were tinted with the henna, the staff with the
+      apple-green ribbons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I came to the end I said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, holy marabout, tell me one thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allah is just. I listen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If the scorpions had slept with a veiled woman who held the hedgehog&rsquo;s
+      foot, how would it have been? Would the woman have died or lived?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The marabout did not answer. He looked at me calmly, as at a child who
+      asks questions about the mysteries of life which only the old can
+      understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These things,&rdquo; he said at length, &ldquo;are hidden from the unbeliever. You
+      are a Roumi. How, then, should you learn such matters?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But even the Roumi&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the desert there are mysteries,&rdquo; continued the marabout, &ldquo;which even
+      the faithful must not seek to penetrate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it is useless to&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very useless. It is as useless as to try to count the grains of the
+      sand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I said no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mohammed El Aïd Ben Ali Tidjani smiled once more, and beckoned to a negro
+      attendant, who ran with a musical box, one of the gifts of the faithful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This comes from Paris,&rdquo; he said, with a spreading complacence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there was within the box a sounding click, and there stole forth a
+      tinkling of Auber&rsquo;s music to <i>Masaniello</i>, &ldquo;Come o&rsquo;er the moonlit
+      sea!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>