Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 7.djvu/248

226 have spared him from my sabre and he hath sought refuge in my house and taken up his abode in my courts, after having endured hardships and horrors and come through all manner of mortal perils, each more terrible than the other; yet hitherto is he not safe from drinking the cup of death and from the cutting off of his breath.’ ‘If I bring him to thee,’ replied Shewahi, ‘wilt thou reunite him with these his children? Or, if they prove not his, wilt thou pardon him and restore him to his own country?’

The queen was exceeding wroth at her words and said to her, ‘Out on thee, O ill-omened old woman! How long wilt thou play us false in the matter of this stranger, who hath dared [to intrude] upon us and hath lifted our veil and pried into our conditions? Thinkest thou that he shall come to our land and look upon our faces and soil our honours and after return in safety to his own country and expose our affairs to his people, wherefore our report will be bruited abroad among all the kings of the quarters of the earth and the merchants will bear tidings of us in every direction, saying, “A mortal entered the Wac Islands and traversed the land of the Jinn and the lands of the Wild Beasts and the Birds and set foot in the country of the warlocks and the enchanters and returned in safety?”safety”? [sic] This shall never be; and I swear by Him who created the heavens and builded them. Him who spread out the earth and levelled it, who made all creatures and numbered them, that, if they be not his children, I will assuredly slay him and strike off his head with my own hand!’

Then she cried out at the old woman, who fell down for fear; and she said to the chamberlain, ‘Take twenty slaves and go with this old woman and fetch me in haste the youth who is in her house.’ So they dragged Shewahi along, pale and trembling in every nerve, till they came to her house, where she went in to Hassan, who rose to