Ah, there was a change now! Demetri had ceased to protest, to deprecate and to retreat. Mouraki’s frowns had vanished, he smiled again in satisfaction and approval. Demetri threw a glance at me. Mouraki spoke. Demetri answered. For an instant I looked at the soldiers: they were more weary and inattentive than ever. Back went my eyes. Now Mouraki, with suave graciousness, in condescending recognition of a good servant, stepped right close up to Demetri and, raising his hand, reached round the fellow’s shoulder and patted him approvingly on the back. ‘It will be now!’ I thought; nay, I believe I whispered, and I drew my legs up under me and grasped the hidden knife in my pocket. ‘Yes, it must be now.’ Mouraki patted, laughed, evidently praised. Demetri bowed his head. But his long, lithe, bare, brown right arm that had hung so weary a time in idle waiting by his side--the arm whose hand held the great bright blade so lovingly polished, so carefully tested--the arm began slowly and cautiously to crawl up his side. It bent at the elbow, it rested a moment after its stealthy secret climb; then, quick as lightning, it flew above Demetri’s head, the blade sparkled in the sun, the hand swooped down, and the gleams of the sunlit steel were quenched in the body of Mouraki. With a sudden cry of amazement, of horror and of agony, the Pasha staggered and fell prone on the rocky ground; and Demetri cried, ‘At last, my God, at last!’ and laughed aloud. [Illustration: “AT LAST, MY GOD, AT LAST!”] CHAPTER XIX THE ARMENIAN DOG! The death-cry that Mouraki Pasha uttered under Demetri’s avenging knife seemed to touch a spring and set us all a-moving. The sound of it turned the soldiers’ idle lassitude into an amazed wonder, which again passed in an instant to fierce excitement. Phroso leapt, with a shriek, to her feet. I hurled myself across the space between me and the rope, knife in hand. The soldiers, neglecting their unarmed prisoner, turned with a shout of rage, and rushed wildly up the slope to where Demetri stood, holding his blade towards heaven. The rope parted under my impetuous assault. Phroso was by my side, in an instant we were in the boat; I pushed off. I seized the sculls; but then I hesitated. Was this man my friend, my ally, my accomplice, what you will? I looked up the slope. Demetri stood by the body of Mouraki. The four soldiers rushed towards him. I could not approve his deed; but I had suffered it to be done. I must not run away now. I pushed the sculls into Phroso’s hands. But she had caught my purpose, and threw herself upon me, twining her arms about me and crying, ‘No, no, my lord! My lord, no, no!’ Her love gave her strength; for a moment I could not disengage myself, but stood fast bound in her embrace.