404 Notes on Sport and Travel iv 



stream of sparks like a firework, I began to think 

 that I had seen the same sort of thing before. He 

 managed to upset the charcoal all over the floor, 

 which caused a slight commotion among the 

 orchestra, but immediately danced it out with his 

 bare feet, no very difficult feat for a horny-hoofed 

 Moor accustomed to walk barefooted over the 

 scalding stones of Algiers. Still the infernal roar 

 continued, and from the floor bounced up fresh 

 dancers who danced themselves into insanity and 

 exhaustion ; sometimes they reeled, panting and 

 groaning, to the feet of the sheik, who plucked them 

 with the tips of his fingers, kissed them on the fore- 

 head, and seemed to make magical passes over them, 

 they the while kissing and nuzzling over his hand 

 with apparent veneration. There was something 

 very striking about this ; it gave one the idea that 

 they believed in the power of the sheik to comfort 

 and relieve them under their self-inflicted torments. 

 Finally they were caught and carried out like the 

 first. 



Meanwhile, my black-haired friend, refreshed by 

 his supper of live charcoal, was casting about for 

 some other means of doing himself a personal 

 injury, and I was told by the dragoman that 

 something very horrible was coming. He howled 

 his way to the sheik, who put his fingers to his 

 head in a mysterious manner like a secret sign, and 

 handed him an iron pin about a foot long, fairly 

 sharp at the end and about as thick as one's little 



