him, whilst Asad shook his head and laughed
again.

"An it were not against the Prophet's law to make a wager...." he was
beginning, when Marzak interrupted him.

"Already should I have proposed one."

"So that," said Sakr-el-Bahr, "thy purse would come to match thine head
for emptiness."

Marzak looked at him and sneered. Then he snatched from Vigitello's
hands one of the cross-bows that he bore and set a shaft to it. And then
at last Sakr-el-Bahr was to learn the malice that was at the root of all
this odd pretence.

"Look now," said the youth, "there is on that palmetto bale a speck of
pitch scarce larger than the pupil of my eye. Thou'lt need to strain thy
sight to see it. Observe how my shaft will find it. Canst thou better
such a shot?"

His eyes, upon Sakr-el-Bahr's face, watching it closely, observed the
pallor by which it was suddenly overspread. But the corsair's recovery
was almost as swift. He laughed, seeming so entirely careless that
Marzak began to doubt whether he had paled indeed or whether his own
imagination had led him to suppose it.

"Ay, thou'lt choose invisible marks, and wherever the arrow enters
thou'lt say 'twas there! An old trick, O Marzak. Go cozen women with
it."

"Then," said Marzak, "we will take instead the slender cord that binds
the bale." And he levelled his bow. But Sakr-el-Bahr's hand closed upon
his arm in an easy yet paralyzing grip.

"Wait," he said. "Thou'lt choose another mark for several reasons. For
one, I'll not have thy shaft blundering through my oarsmen and haply
killing one of them. Most of them are slaves specially chosen for their
brawn, and I cannot spare any. Another reason is that the mark is a
foolish one. The distance is not more than ten paces. A childish test,
which, maybe, is the reason why thou hast chosen it."

Marzak lowered his bow and Sakr-el-Bahr released his arm. They looked at
each other, the corsair supremely master of himself and smiling easily,
no faintest trace of the terror that was in his soul showing upon his
swarthy bearded countenance or in his hard pale eyes.

He pointed up the hillside to the nearest olive tree, a hundred paces
distant. "Yonder," he said, "is a man's mark. Put me a shaft through the
long branch of that first olive."

Asad and his officers voiced approval.

"A man's mark, indeed," said the Basha, "so that he be a marksman."

But Marzak shrugged his shoulders with make-believe contempt. "I knew he
would refus