Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night - Volume 2.djvu/77

 The Tale of Ghanim bin Ayyub. 57 contained and he said to himself, "Would that I knew the contents of that box ! " However, he waited till day broke, when morning shone and showed her sheen : whereupon he came down from the date-tree and scooped away the earth with his hands, till the box was laid bare and disengaged from the ground. Then he took a large stone and hammered at the lock till he broke it and, opening the lid, beheld a young lady, a model of beauty and loveliness, clad in the richest of garments and jewels of gold and such necklaces of precious stones that, were the Sultan's country evened with them, it would not pay their price. She had been drugged with Bhang, but her bosom, rising and falling, showed that her breath had not departed. When Ghanim saw her, he knew that some one had played her false and hocussed her; so he pulled her out of the chest and laid her on the ground with her face up- wards. As soon as she smelt the breeze and the air entered her nostrils, mouth and lungs, she sneezed and choked and coughed ; when there fell from out her throat a pill of Cretan Bhang, had an elephant smelt it he would have slept from night to night. Then she opened her eyes and glancing around said, in sweet voice and gracious words, " Woe to thee O wind ! there is naught in thee to satisfy the thirsty, nor aught to gratify one whose thirst is satis- fied ! Where is Zahr al-Bostan ? " But no one answered her, so she turned her and cried out, " Ho Sabfhah ! Shajarat al-Durr! Nural-Huda! Najmat al-Subh ! be ye awake? Shahwah, Nuzhah, Halwd, Zarffah, out on you, speak! 1 " But no one answered; so she looked all around and said, " Woe's me ! have they entombed me in the tombs ? O Thou who knowest what man's thought enwombs and who givest compensation on the Day of Doom, who can have brought me from amid hanging screens and curtains veiling the Han'm-rooms and set me down between four tombs?" All this while Ghanim was standing by : then he said to her, " O my lady, here are neither screened rooms nor palace-Harfms nor yet tombs ; only the slave henceforth devoted to thy love, Ghanim bin Ayyub, sent to thee by the Omniscient One above, that all thy troubles He rriay remove and win for thee every wish that doth behove ! " Then he held his peace. She was reassured by Names of her slave-girls which mean (in order), Garden-bloom, Dawn (or" Beautiful), Tree o' Pearl (P. N. of Saladin's wife), Light of (right) Direction, Star o* the Morn. Lewdness ( = Shahwah, I suppose this is a chaff), Delight, Sweetmeat and Miss Pretty.