uted, 'The Sword of Aklis! nought save the Sword!'

Now, at these words the beasts with men's heads wagged their tails, all
of them, from right to left, and kept their jaws from motion, staring
stupidly at the dishes; but the dishes began to send forth stealthy
steams, insidious whispers to the nose, silver intimations of
savouriness, so that they on a sudden set up a howl, and Shibli Bagarag
puckered his garments from them as from devouring dogs, and hastened from
that hall to a third, where at the entrance a damsel stood that smiled to
him, and led him into a vast marbled chamber, forty cubits high, hung
with draperies, and in it a hundred doors; and he was in the midst of a
very rose-garden of young beauties, such as the Blest behold in Paradise,
robed in the colours of the rising and setting sun; plump, with long,
black, languishing, almond-shaped eyes, and undulating figures. So they
cried to him, 'What greeting, O our King?'

Now, he counted twenty and seven of them, and, fitting his gallantry to
verse, answered:

Poor are the heavens that have not ye
To swell their glowing plenty;
Up there but one bright moon I see,
Here mark I seven-and-twenty.

The damsels laughed and flung back their locks at his flattery, sporting
with him; and he thought, 'These be sweet maidens! I will know if they be
illusions like Rabesqurat'; so, as they were romping, he slung his right
arm round one, and held the Lily to her, but there was no change in her
save that she winked somewhat and her eyes watered; and it was so with
the others, for when they saw him hold the Lily to one they made him do
so to them likewise. Then he took the phial, and touched their lips with
the waters, and lo! they commenced luting and laughing, and singing
verses, and prattling, laughing betweenwhiles at each other; and one, a
noisy one, with long, black, unquiet tresses, and a curved foot and
roguish ankle, sang as she twirled:

My heart is another's, I cannot be tender;
Yet if thou storm it, I fain must surrender.

And another, a fresh-cheeked, fair-haired, full-eyed damsel, strong upon
her instep and stately in the bearing of her shoulders, sang shrilly:

I'm of the mountains, and he that comes to me
Like eagle must win, and like hurricane woo me.

And another, reclining on a couch buried in dusky silks, like a butterfly
under the leaves, a soft ball of beauty, sang moaningly:

Here like a fruit on