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They therefore belong to the men who, in virtue of their special capacities, are alone capable of the effort requisite to perform this feat; and it matters nothing to others, by whom the efreets' services are borrowed, whether the effort in question occupied a year or a day, or whether it took place yesterday or fifty years ago.
"Conjuring to strike a perpendicular, noo, or say the Lord's Prayer backwards?" "Wadna ye prefer a meeracle or twa?" asked Sandy, after a long pull at the whisky-toddy. "Or a few efreets?" added I. "Whatsoever you likes, gentlemen. You're best judges, to be sure," answered Farmer Porter, in an awed and helpless voice. "Aweel I'm no that disinclined to believe in the occult sciences.
In most respects the Trolls resemble the Teutonic elves and fairies, and the Jinn or Efreets of the Arabian Nights; but their pedigree is less honourable. The fairies, or "White Ladies," were not originally spirits of darkness, but were nearly akin to the swan-maidens, dawn-nymphs, and dryads, and though their wrath was to be dreaded, they were not malignant by nature.
The noiseless and uncanny attendants, whom he did not know whether to regard as Efreets, or demons, or simply illusions, but whose services he had no wish to retain, had all withdrawn. Mrs. Futvoye was peacefully slumbering, and her husband was in a better humour than he had been all the evening.
The mediaeval conception of the Devil is a grotesque compound of elements derived from all the systems of pagan mythology which Christianity superseded. He is primarily a rebellious angel, expelled from heaven along with his followers, like the giants who attempted to scale Olympos, and like the impious Efreets of Arabian legend who revolted against the beneficent rule of Solomon.
"You may doubt the existence of Efreets," continued Cairn, "but neither you nor I can doubt the creative power of thought.
And the sheikh said: "Are there in this place any of the efreets confined in bottles of brass from the time of Solomon?" He answered: "Yes, in the Sea of El-Karkar, where are a people of the descendants of Noah, whose country the deluge reached not, and they are separated there from the rest of the sons of Adam."
"There will be no difficulty, for as soon as I am in the bottle I shall summon certain inferior Efreets, and they will replace the seal." "When you are once in the bottle," said Horace, at a venture, "you probably won't be in a position to summon anybody." "Before I get into the bottle, then!" said the Jinnee, impatiently. "Thou dost but juggle with words!"
"Even at this hour," said the Jinnee, undecidedly, "I might find it in my heart to spare thee, were I but sure that thou wouldst be faithful unto me!" "I should have thought I was more to be trusted than one of your beastly Efreets!" said Horace, with well-assumed indifference. "But never mind, I don't know that I care, after all. I've nothing particular to live for now.
The efreets shut up in machinery will not work for human beings at all, unless there are human magicians who manage thus to imprison them.
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