Page:The Floating Prince - Frank R Stockton.djvu/146

Rh  There was a great table in the room, covered with parchments and old volumes of magic lore. At one end of the table was the magician's chair, and in this Filamina seated herself, first piling several cushions on the seat, to make herself high enough.

"Now, then," said she, to the afrit in attendance, "everything seems ready, but you must light something to make a mystic smell. That iron lamp at the other end of the room will do. Do you know what to pour into it?"

The afrit did not know, but he thought he could find something, so he examined the bottles on the shelves, and taking down one of them, he poured some of its contents into the lamp and lighted it. In an instant there was an explosion, and a piece of the heavy lamp just grazed the afrit's head. "Don't try that again," said Filamina. "You will be hurt. Let a ghost come in. He can't be injured."

So a ghost came in, and he got another iron lamp, and tried the stuff from another bottle. This blew up, the same as the other, and several pierces of the lamp went right through the ghost's body, but of course it made no difference to him. He tried again, and this time he found something which smelt extremely mystical.

"Now call them in," said Filamina, and the six persons who were in trouble entered the room. Filamina took a piece of paper and a pencil, and asked them, in turn, what they wished her to do for them. The first was a merchant, in great grief because he had lost a lot of rubies, and he wanted to know where to find them.

"How many of them were there?" asked Filamina of the unlucky merchant

"Two quarts," said the merchant. "I measured them a few days ago. Each one of them was as large as a cherry."