Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 1.djvu/403

375 drugged her; so he pulled her out of the chest and laid her on the ground on her back. As soon as she scented the breeze and the air entered her nostrils and lungs, she sneezed and choked and coughed, when there fell from her mouth a pastille of Cretan henbane, enough to make an elephant sleep from night to night, if he but smelt it. Then she opened her eyes and looking round, exclaimed in a sweet and melodious voice, ‘Out on thee, O breeze! There is in thee neither drink for the thirsty nor solace for him whose thirst is quenched! Where is Zehr el Bustan?’ But no one answered her; so she turned and cried out, ‘Ho, Sebiheh, Shejeret ed Durr, Nour el Huda, Nejmet es Subh, Shehweh, Nuzheh, Hulweh, Zerifeh! Out on ye, speak!’ But no one answered her; and she looked about her and said, ‘Woe is me! they have buried me among the tombs! O Thou who knowest what is in the breasts and who wilt requite at the Day of Resurrection, who hath brought me out from among the screens and curtains of the harem and laid me between four tombs?’ All this while Ghanim was standing by: then he said to her, ‘O my lady, here are neither screens nor curtains nor palaces; only thy bond slave Ghanim ben Eyoub, whom He who knoweth the hidden things hath brought hither, that he might save thee from these perils and accomplish for thee all that thou desirest.’ And he was silent. When she saw how the case stood, she exclaimed, ‘I testify that there is no god but God and that Mohammed is the Apostle of God!’ Then she put her hands to her face and turning to Ghanim, said in a sweet voice, ‘O blessed youth, who brought me hither! See, I am now come to myself.’ ‘O my lady,’ replied he, ‘three black eunuchs came hither, bearing this chest;’ and told her all that had happened and how his being belated had proved the means of her preservation from death by suffocation. Then he asked