This etext was produced by Pat Castevans <Patcat@ctnet.net>
and David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
By George Meredith
1898/1909
Contents:
Now, they sped from the Cave of Chrysolites by another passage than thatby which they entered it, and nothing but the light of the Sword to guidethem. By that light Shibli Bagarag could distinguish glimmering shapes,silent and statue-like, to the right and the left of them, their visageshidden in a veil of heavy webs; and he saw what seemed in the dusk broadhalls, halls of council, and again black pools and black groves, andcolumns of crowded porticoes,—all signs of an underground kingdom. Theycame to some steps and mounted these severally, coming to a platform, inthe middle of which leapt a fountain, the top spray of it touched with abeam of earth and the air breathed by men. Here he heard the youthsdabble with the dark waters, and he discerned Gulrevaz tossing it in hertwo hands, calling, 'Koorookh! Koorookh!' Then they said to him, 'Stirthis fountain with the Sword, O Master of the Event!' So he stirred thefountain, and the whole body of it took a leap toward the light that waslike the shoot of a long lance of silver in the moon's rays, and lo! inits place the ruffled feathers of a bird. Then the seven youths and thePrincess and Shibli Bagarag got up under its feathers like a brood ofwater-fowl; and the bird winged straight up as doth a blinded bee,ascending, and passing in the ascent a widening succession of windingterraces, till he observed the copper sun of Aklis and the red landsbelow it. Thrice, in the exuberance of his gladness, he waved the Sword,and the sun lost that dulness on its disk and took a bright flame, andthrew golden arrows everywhere; and the pastures were green, the streamsclear, the sands sparkling. The bird flew, and circled, and hung poiseda moment, presently descending on the roof of the palace. Now, there washere a piece of solid glass, propped on two crossed bars of gold, and itwas shaped like an eye, and might have been taken for one of the eyesinhabiting the head of some monstrous Genie. Shibli Bagarag ran to itwhen he was afoot, and peered through it. Surely, it was the firstobject of his heart that he beheld—Noorna, his betrothed, pale on thepillar; she with her head between her hands and her hair scattered by thestorm, as one despairing. Still he looked, and he save swimming roundthe pillar that monstrous fish, with its sole baleful eye, which hadgulped them both in the closed shell of magic pearl; and he knew the fishfor Karaz, the Genie, their enemy. Then he turned to the Princess, withan imploring voice for counsel how to reach her and bring her rescue; butshe said, 'The Sword is in thy hands, none of us dare wield it'; and theseven youths answered likewise. So, left to himself, he drew the Swordfrom his girdle, and hissed on the heads of the serpents, at the sametime holding it so that it might lengthen out inimitably. Then he leanedit over the eye of the glass, in the direction of the pillar besieged bythe billows, and lo! with one cut, even at that distance, he divided thefishy monster, and with another severed the chains that had fetteredNoorna; and she arose and smiled blissfully to the sky, and stoodupright, and signalled him to lay the point o