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So he looked up, and Abarak was before him, the lifted nostrils of the little man wide with the flame of anger. And Abarak said, 'O youth, regard me with the eyes of judgement! Now, is it not frightful to rate me little? an instigation of the evil one to repute me ugly? The promptings of wisdom counselled Shibli Bagarag to say, 'Frightful beyond contemplation, O Abarak! one to shame our species!
After awhile, as Abarak still cried in his ear, 'What sight? he looked at him with a large eye, saying querulously, 'Is it written I shall be pushed by the shoulder through life? And is it in the pursuit of further thwackings?
Wullahy, what has not the strength of this hand overthrown? Then the brows of Abarak twisted; his limbs twitched, and he bawled, 'To the proof! waking all the echoes of Aklis.
Remember the seventh pillar! Then, with a spurn from the hand of Abarak, the youth fell back senseless at the feet of the Queen. Now, with the return of consciousness his hearing was bewitched with strange delicious melodies, the touch of stringed instruments, and others breathed into softly as by the breath of love, delicate, tender, alive with enamoured bashfulness.
Shibli Bagarag lifted the bar to the shoulder of Abarak, and poised it, and peered through the length of it, and lo! there was a sea tossing in tumult, and one pillar standing erect in the midst of the sea; and on the pillar, above the washing waves, with hair blown back, and flapping raiment, pale but smiling still, Noorna, his betrothed!
Then Abarak said to Shibli Bagarag, 'Smite! And the youth lifted the bar to his right shoulder, and smote; and the door obeyed the blow, and discovered an opening into a strange dusky land, as it seemed a valley, on one side of which was a ragged copper sun setting low, large as a warrior's battered shield, giving deep red lights to a brook that fell, and over a flat stream a red reflection, and to the sides of the hills a dark red glow.
Truly the ways of Allah are wonderful! Shibli Bagarag resisted him in nothing, and Abarak loosed the two bright hairs from his wrist, and those two hairs swelled and took glittering scales, and were sapphire snakes with wings of intense emerald; and they rose in the air spirally together, each over each, so that to see them one would fancy in the darkness a fountain of sapphire waters flashed with the sheen of emerald.
Already, see, the hue returneth to his cheek and the dimples of pleasure. So was it; and she said, 'Mount, O thou of the net and the bar! and stride Koorookh across the neck, for it is nigh the setting of the moon, and by dawn we must be in our middle flight, seen of men, a cloud over them. Said Abarak, 'To hear is to obey!
Now shall he see the vengeance of kings on his enemies. Thereupon he made a signal, and the scimitars of the guard were in air over the head of Feshnavat, when darkness as of the dropping of night fell upon all, and the darkness spake, saying, 'I am Abarak of the Bar, preceder of the Event!
Wullahy, what has not the strength of this hand overthrown? Then the brows of Abarak twisted; his limbs twitched, and he bawled, 'To the proof! waking all the echoes of Aklis.
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