sun never beholds them on the face of the earth.

The night was well advanced when the six Omarites came forth to the
sleepers, and while five of the fakirs stood round them in silence,
the sixth--the one with the long flowing beard--bent over the
children and examined their features attentively in the darkness of
the night, which was only mitigated by the light of a few faint stars
half hidden among errant clouds. At last he whispered to his comrades,
"It is they." Then, turning the tips of his thumbs downwards, he laid
them softly on Thomar's head. All five fakirs listened with rapt
attention. The bosom of the sleeping lad began to heave tumultuously;
he clinched his fists; his face grew hot; his lips swelled. The old
man then seemed to breathe upon his forehead, as if he would whisper
something, whereupon the sleeping lad exclaimed, in a strong, audible
voice, "With swords, with guns, with arms!"

The old men shook their heads, showing thereby that they approved of
his words.

Then the eldest old man bent over the other child and made passes over
her face with his five fingers. The maiden's bosom expanded visibly,
and when the old man stooped over and breathed upon her she cried out
in an energetic, dictatorial manner, "Down on your knees before me!"

At this the Omarites all whispered together, and two of them lifting
the lad, two the girl, and two the merchant, they carried them on
their shoulders into the depths of the cavern.

The mouth of this cavern was the already mentioned tunnel whose
farthest exit debouched upon the valley of Seleucia, half a league
from the sea--that waste, barren, and savage valley.

The Omarites moved to and fro in the black cave without a torch, like
the blind, who do not go astray in the turnings and windings of the
streets, although they see them not. The sleepers had drunk a magic
potion, which did not permit them to awake for some time, and the men
carried them on their shoulders to the opposite entrance of the cavern
and there laid them down on the moss, in a place where the sunlight
was wont to penetrate.

It was already late in the day when the two children awoke. As soon as
they had opened their eyes, their first care was to kiss and embrace
each other. Then they aroused the merchant also and, rubbing sleep out
of their eyes, began to tell him, in childish fashion, what they had
been dreaming about.

"Ah! what a lovely dream I had!" cried Thomar, and even now his eyes