from his tongue and buried its fangs in the flesh of his left
wrist. Cries broke from the crowd. The sight of the blood had excited
them, for these people love blood as the toper loves wine. They urged
the charmer on to fresh exertions with furious screams of encouragement.
The maniac bent his body like a dervish in the last exercises of his
religion, and the ragged musicians forced a more extreme uproar from
their instruments. The charmer caught the snake by the tail, and strove
to pull it backwards off his wrist. But the reptile's fangs were firmly
fastened. It held on with a terrible tenacity, and a struggle ensued
between it and its master. When at length it gave way, it was streaked
with blood, and now at last thoroughly aroused. The charmer scraped his
tongue with a straw; then, casting himself again upon the earth, he
prayed once more with fury to Sidi Mahomet. Claire watched him always,
with that pale and exquisite attention which one genius gives to the
performance of another. Her face was white and still. Her body never
moved. But her eyes blazed with life, and with the fires of a violent
soul completely awake. Having finished his prayer, which ended in a cry
so poignant that it might have burst from the lips of that world on
which the flood came, the charmer remained upon the ground in a sitting
posture, laid the snake in his lap, and drew from the inside of his
ragged robe a Moorish lute made of a bladder, bamboo, and two strings,
and coloured a pale yellowish-green. He plucked the strings gently, and
played the fragment of a wild tune. Then, suddenly catching up the
snake, and thrusting his tongue far out of his mouth, he poised the
snake upon it, rose to his feet and stood at his full height in front of
Claire, fixing his eyes upon her with a glance that seemed to claim from
her both wonder and worship. The snake reared itself up higher and
higher upon the quivering tongue; and the charmer, extending his long
arms, whirled slowly round as if poised upon a movable platform, while a
terrific clamour broke from the Moors, who seemed to be roused by this
feat to the highest pitch of excitement. Still turning and turning, the
charmer drew from his bosom a second snake that was black and larger
than the first, and coiled it round his sinewy neck like a gigantic
necklace, the darting head in front, resting, a sort of monstrous
pendant, upon his uncovered chest. To Renfrew he looked like some
hateful grotesque in a