Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 4.djvu/227

197 His shape was as a willow-wand, For fruits that sweet seductions bore; But in the willow, to enslave The hearts of men, there is no lore. I reared him from a child upon The bed of fondness evermore; And now I am at heart distraught For him and sorrow passing sore.

Then said he to the Vizier, ‘Go back to thy master and tell him that Uns el Wujoud has been missing this year past, and his lord knoweth not whither he is gone nor hath any news of him.’ ‘O my lord,’ answered King Dirbas’s Vizier, ‘my master said to me, “An thou come back without him, thou shalt be ousted from the Vizierate and shall not enter my city.” How then can I return without him?’ So King Shamikh said to his Vizier Ibrahim, ‘Take a company and go with him and make search for Uns el Wujoud everywhere.’ ‘I hear and obey,’ answered Ibrahim, and taking a company of his own retainers, set out in quest of Uns el Wujoud, accompanied by King Dirbas’s Vizier; and as often as they fell in with Bedouins or others, they enquired at them of Uns el Wujoud, saying, ‘Have ye seen a man, whose name is so and so and his favour thus and thus?’ But they answered, ‘We know him not.’

So they fared on, enquiring in city and hamlet and seeking in hill and plain and desert and wold, till they came to the sea-shore, where they took ship and sailed, till they came to the Mountain of the Bereaved Mother; and King Dirbas’s Vizier said to Ibrahim, ‘Why is this mountain thus called?’ ‘There was once of old time,’ answered the other Vizier, ‘a Jinniyeh, of the Jinn of China, who fell passionately in love with a man and being in fear of her own people, searched all the earth for a place, where she might hide him from them, till she happened on this mountain and finding it inaccessible both to men and Jinn, carried off her beloved and lodged him therein. There she used to visit him privily, till she had borne him a number of children, and the merchants, sailing by