Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 7.djvu/273

249 them and they came out and found her riding on a Greek jar of red earthenware with a rope of palm fibres about its neck [by way of halter], which turned under her and ran faster than a Nejd colt, and she said to them, ‘Follow me and fear nothing, for I know forty magical formulas, by the least of which I could make this city a surging sea, swollen with clashing billows, and turn each damsel therein into a fish, and all before dawn. But I was not able to work aught of magic, for fear of the king her father and of regard for her sisters, for that they are redoubtable, by reason of their many guards and servants and tribesmen. However, I will yet show you wonders of my skill and magic; and now let us on, with God’s help and blessing.’

Hassan and his wife rejoiced in this, making sure of escape, and they left the palace and went forth, till they came without the city, when he fortified his heart and smiting the earth with the wand, said, ‘Ho, servants of these names, appear to me and discover to me your estates!’ Thereupon the earth clove in sunder and out came seven Afrits, with their feet in the bowels of the earth and their heads in the clouds. They kissed the earth three times before Hassan and said with one voice, ‘Here are we at thy service, O our lord and ruler over us! What dost thou bid us do? For we hear and obey thy commandment. An thou wilt, we will dry thee up seas and remove mountains from their places.’ Hassan rejoiced in their words and at their speedy answer [to his summons], so he took courage and bracing up his resolution, said to them, ‘Who are ye and what are your names and races? And to what tribes and companies do ye belong?’ They kissed the earth once more and answered with one voice, saying, ‘We are seven kings, each ruling over seven tribes of the Jinn of all conditions, Marids and devils, flyers and divers, dwellers in mountains