Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/163

 and squealed, and while the dark mass that loomed up on the horizon was becoming more and more distinct with every minute, presently splitting into streets and houses; and a pleasant city it was beneath the rays of the dying sun; with carved, massive mosques and low, flat-roofed houses buried in flaunting gardens; with tall, keen-domed palaces, flushing scarlet and gold, gigantic water reservoirs, time-riven arches spanning crooked streets, square towers incrusted in high relief with figures of beast and man, and high above it all, descending in an avalanche of bold masonry, like a vision in a dream, the great palace of the Gengizkhani …

A noisy town. For, in the East, every one talks, and talks in extremes, either in a gloomy whisper or in a raucous scream, with the very voices of horse and camel and donkey seeming to be pitched in a soprano key; and high above the hubbub, just as the cavalcade passed through the East Gate, rose the melodious voice of a muezzin chanting the call to prayer from a minaret:

“Hie ye to devotion, O all ye faithful! Hie ye to salvation! God is most great!”—and the immediate, answering mutter, from balcony and shop, from coffee house and from the gutter itself:

“Here I am at Thy call, O Allah! Here I am at Thy call!”

“Here I am at Thy call!” echoed Aziza Nurmahal, softly, while Hector stared straight ahead.

“Tamerlanistan! The palace of the Gengizkhani!” he whispered, with an odd little catch in his throat;