Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 6.djvu/144

122 all manner eatable fruits, two of each kind. On the branches were birds warbling their various songs; the mocking-bird trilled out her sweet notes and the turtle filled the place with her voice. There sang the nightingale, whose chant arouses the sleeper, and the merle with its note like the human voice and the cushat and the ring-dove, whilst the popinjay answered them with its fluent tongue.

The valley pleased them and they ate of its fruits and drank of its waters, after which they sat under the shadow of the trees, till drowsiness overcame them and they slept, glory be to Him who sleepeth not! As they lay asleep, two fierce Marids swooped down on them and taking each one on his shoulders, flew up with them into the air, till they were above the clouds. Presently, Gherib and Sehim awoke and found themselves betwixt heaven and earth; so they looked at those who bore them and saw that they were two Marids, each as big as a great palm-tree, with hair like horses’ tails and claws like lions’ claws; the head of the one was as that of a dog and that of the other as that of an ape. When they saw this, they exclaimed, ‘There is no power and no virtue save in God the Most High, the Supreme!’

Now the reason of this was that a certain king of the kings of the Jinn, Muraash by name, had a son called Saaïc, who loved a damsel of the Jinn, named Nejmeh; and the twain used to foregather in the valley, in the guise of birds. Gherib and Sehim saw them thus and deeming them birds, shot at them with arrows and wounded Saaïc, whose blood flowed. Nejmeh mourned over him, then, fearing lest the like should befall herself, caught up her lover and flew with him to his father’s palace, where she cast him down at the gate. The warders bore him in and laid him before the King, who, seeing the arrow sticking in his side, exclaimed, ‘Alas,