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It will assuredly be by the special favour of the gods if we look on the face of our son, yet living.

Most assuredly I, ill-fated that I am, can hardly look for such a blessing.

O child, may this speech of thine prove true! Still it is fitting that we should take the fires with us, as we follow. Do you, then, follow the track; and we will come as soon as we have brought the fire from the fire-cell.

[Exit, with wife and daughter-in-law.

I will now follow Garuda. (Looking in front.) Yonder, afar off, I see the enemy of the Nágas, on a pinnacle of Malaya, making new gulleys in the mountain-side, as he rubs his gory beak. The woods around are all uprooted and burnt by the streaks of flaming fire from his eyes, and the ground is hollowed round him by his dreadful adamantine claws.

Never since my birth has so wonderful a thing been seen by me in my feasts on the lords of the Nágas! Not