Page:Katha sarit sagara, vol2.djvu/600

 gods, pleased with his cleverness and resolution, honoured him, and gave him Kalávatí to wife, and made him an attendant on himself. Then the brave Thințhákarála lived happily, like a god, in heaven, with Kalávatí, by the favour of Śiva.

" So, you see, such is the style in which gamblers exhibit their treachery and audacity; accordingly Agniśikha the Vampire, what is there to be surprised at in your having been treacherously thrown into tins well by Dágineya the gambler? So come out of this pit, friend, and we will come out also."

When the Bráhman demons said this to me, I came up out of that pit, and being hungry, I came across a Brahman traveller that night in the city. So I rushed forward and seized that Bráhman to eat him, but he invoked the protection of king Vikramáditya. And the moment the king heard his cry, he rushed out like flame, and while still at a distance, checked me by exclaiming " Ah villain ! do not kill the Bráhman:" and then he proceeded to cut off the head of a figure of a man he had drawn; that did not sever my neck, but made it stream with blood.

Then I left the Bráhman and clung to the king's feet, and he spared my life.

" Such is the power of that god, king Vikramáditya. And it is by his orders that I have slain this hypocritical kápálika. So he is my proper prey, to be devoured by me as being a Vetála ; let him go, Yamaśikha !"

Though Agniśikha made this appeal to Yamaśikha, the latter proceed- ed contumaciously to drag with his hand the corpse of that hypocritical kápálika. Then king Vikramáditya appeared there, and drew the figure of a man on the earth and then cut off its hand with his sword. That made the hand of Yamaśikha fall severed; so he left the corpse, and fled in fear. And Agniśikha immediately devoured the corpse of that kápálika. And I witnessed all this, securely protected by the might of the king.*

" In these words did that wife of the Yaksha, Madanamanjarí by name, describe your power, king, and then she went on to say to me."

Then, Anangadeva, the king said to me in a gentle voice, " Yakshi, being delivered from the kápálika, go to the house of your husband." Then I bowed before him, and returned to this my own home, thinking how I might repay to that king the benefit he had conferred on me. In this way your master gave me life, family and husband ; and when you tell him this story of mine, it will agree with his own recollections. Moreover, I have to-day found out that the king of Sinhala has sent to that king his daughter, the greatest beauty in the three worlds, who has