Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 7.djvu/182

160 thy weeping this day. It would seem thou longest after thy mother and country. If so, we will equip thee and carry thee to thy home and thy friends.’ ‘By Allah,’ answered he, ‘I desire not to part from you!’ ‘Then which of us hath vexed thee,’ asked they, ‘that thou art thus troubled?’ But he was ashamed to say, ‘Nought troubleth me save love of the damsel,’ lest they should disavow him: so he was silent and would tell them nought of his case.

Then his sister came forward and said to them, ‘He hath caught a bird from the air and would have you help him tame her.’ Whereupon they all turned to him and said, ‘We are all at thy service and whatsoever thonthou [sic] seekest, we will do: but tell us thy story and conceal from us nought of thy case.’ But he said to his sister, ‘Do thou tell them, for I am ashamed to face them with these words.’ So she said to them, ‘O my sisters, when we went away and left this poor fellow alone, the palace was straitened upon him and he feared lest some one should come in to him, for ye know that the sons of Adam are light-witted. So, of his loneliness and trouble, he opened the door of the staircase leading to the roof and sat there, looking upon the valley and watching the gate, in his fear lest any should come thither. One day, as he sat thus, he saw ten birds making for the palace, and they lighted down on the brink of the pool in the pavilion. He watched them and saw, amongst them, one goodlier than the rest, which pecked the others and flouted them, whilst they dared not put out a claw to it.

Presently, they put their claws to their necks and rending their feathers, came forth therefrom and became damsels like the moon at its full, whereof one was fairer of face than the rest and goodlier of shape and more elegant of apparel. Then they put off their clothes and plunging into the water, fell to playing with one another,