ole to a
corner and returned with a large and curved sheet of glass. Without
looking at Domini he came to her and placed it in her hands. When the
dancer saw the glass he stood still, growled again long and furiously,
threw himself on his knees before Domini, licked his lips, then,
abruptly thrusting forward his face, set his teeth in the sheet
of glass, bit a large piece off, crunched it up with a loud noise,
swallowed it with a gulp, and growled for more. She fed him again, while
the tomtoms went on roaring, and the child in its red pillow watched
with its weary eyes. And when he was full fed, only a fragment of glass
remained between her fingers, he fell upon the ground and lay like one
in a trance.

Then the second youth bowed to the tomtoms, leaping gently on the
pavement, foamed at the mouth, growled, snuffed up the incense fumes,
shook his long mane, and placed his naked feet in the red-hot coals of
the brazier. He plucked out a coal and rolled his tongue round it. He
placed red coals under his bare armpits and kept them there, pressing
his arms against his sides. He held a coal, like a monocle, in his eye
socket against his eye. And all the time he leaped and bowed and foamed,
undulating his body like a snake. The child looked on with a still
gravity, and the tomtoms never ceased. From the gallery above painted
faces peered down, but Domini did not see them. Her attention was taken
captive by the young priests of the Sahara. For so she called them in
her mind, realising that there were religious fanatics whose half-crazy
devotion seemed to lift them above the ordinary dangers to the body. One
of the musicians now took his turn, throwing his tomtom to the eater
of glass, who had wakened from his trance. He bowed and leaped; thrust
spikes behind his eyes, through his cheeks, his lips, his arms; drove a
long nail into his head with a wooden hammer; stood upon the sharp edge
of an upturned sword blade. With the spikes protruding from his face in
all directions, and his eyes bulging out from them like balls, he spun
in a maze of hair, barking like a dog. The child regarded him with a
still attention, and the incense fumes were cloudy in the court. Then
the last of the four men sprang up in the midst of a more passionate
uproar from the tomtoms. He wore a filthy burnous, and, with a shriek,
he plunged his hand into its hood and threw some squirming things upon
the floor. They began to run, rearing stiff tails into the