Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 7.djvu/230

208 and the army set out. Hassan accompanied her, drowned in the sea of solicitude and reciting verses, whilst she strove to comfort him and exhorted him to patience; but he awoke not [from his melancholy] and paid no heed to her exhortations. They fared on thus till they came to the Land of Birds, and when they entered it, it seemed to Hassan as if the world were overturned, for the exceeding clamour. His head ached and his mind was dazed, his eyes were blinded and his ears deaved, and he feared with an exceeding fear and looked for nothing but death, saying in himself, ‘If this be the Land of Birds, how will the Land of Beasts be?’ But, when Shewahi saw him in this plight, she laughed at him, saying, ‘O my son, if this be thy case in the first island, how will it fare with thee, when thou comest to the others?’

So he humbled himself in prayer to God, beseeching Him to succour him against that wherewithal He had afflicted him and bring him to his wishes; and they ceased not going till they passed out of the Land of Birds and traversing the Land of Beasts, came to the Land of Jinn, which when Hassan saw, he was sore affrighted and repented him of having entered it with them. But he sought aid of God the Most High and fared on with them, till they were quit of the Land of Jinn and came to the river, on whose banks they halted and pitched their tents at the foot of a vast and lofty mountain. Then they rested and ate and drank and slept in security, for they were come to their own country.

On the morrow the old woman set Hassan a settle of alabaster, inlaid with pearls and jewels and nuggets of red gold, by the river-side, and he sat down thereon, having first bound his face with a chinband, that discovered nought of him but his eyes. Then she let proclaim among the troops that they should all assemble before her tent and put off their clothes and go down into the stream