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The Weird Orient: Nine Mystic Tales

by Henry Iliowizi · English · Gutenberg #42963 · 384,874 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Weird Orient: Nine Mystic Tales

Author: Henry Iliowizi

Illustrator: William Sherman Potts


        
Release date: June 17, 2013 [eBook #42963]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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Transcriber's Note

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                The
            Weird Orient

                Nine
            Mystic Tales


                 BY
           HENRY ILIOWIZI

  Author of "In the Pale," "Jewish
     Dreams and Realities," etc.


            PHILADELPHIA
     HENRY T. COATES AND COMPANY
                1900


  Copyright 1899 by HENRY ILIOWIZI.
        All rights reserved.
    ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL,
              LONDON.




  [Illustration: "Touch me not."
      Page 22.]




PUBLISHERS' PREFACE.


In introducing to the general public a writer who has heretofore been
known chiefly among the people of his own race, his publishers may
perhaps be permitted to say a word. Rabbi Iliowizi is a Hebrew of pure
lineage, the son of a zealous member of the Chassidim, a Kabbalistic
sect numbering over half a million members in Russia, Roumania and
Gallicia, but rarely met with in this country. He passed his infancy
and boyhood in the Russian provinces of Minsk and Moghileff, and in
Roumania, growing to manhood and receiving his education at
Frankfort-on-the-Main, Berlin and Breslau, where he qualified himself
for a theological career. After six years of study in Germany, he
spent some four years more perfecting his training in modern languages
and in Arabic and Hebrew in London and Paris, under the auspices of
the Anglo-Jewish Association and the Alliance Israelite Universelle,
as a preparation to take charge of one of the outlying mission
stations maintained by these affiliated societies in the Orient, where
they support some fifty schools for the benefit of their oppressed
co-religionists. After a prolonged service in Morocco, engaged in the
educational work of the two societies, Mr. Iliowizi lived for a year
at Gibraltar, and then came to America to devote himself to the
ministry of the Jewish Church, and is now the spiritual head of a
large congregation of his own people.

Mr. Iliowizi has hitherto contributed principally to the literature of
his race, being known among Jews by several works; most widely,
perhaps, by a volume of stories of Russian life, under the title of
"In the Pale," recently published by the Jewish Publication Society of
America for its subscribers. In the series of Eastern tales,
comprising the present book, which appeals to a larger audience, he
has the special advantage, not only of a lengthened residence among
Eastern peoples, but that he is himself of an Oriental race, of a
heredity highly tinctured by the tenets of one of its most mystical
sects, and personally is of a strongly Semitic type of mind, tempered
by the maturing of his powers in the clear atmosphere of the New World
intellectual life. He has, therefore,--or ought to have,--exceptional
facilities for interpreting to the West the mind and heart of the
East.

Whoever has lived long in the Orient,--and Morocco is essentially
Eastern in its atmosphere, even if geographically it might possibly be
otherwise classed,--cannot but realize the subtle and inexpressible
influence that so strongly pervades its life, and which, often as it
has been spoken of, is so hard for the Occidental mind fully to
understand or appreciate. It is the "call of the East," as Mr.
Kipling happily puts it, and of which his British soldier sings in
such realistic fashion:

    "An' I'm learnin' 'ere in London what the ten-year sodger tells;
    'If you've 'eard the East a-callin', why you won't 'eed nothin' else.'
        No! you won't 'eed nothin' else
        But them spicy garlic smells
    An' the sunshine an' the palm trees an' the tinkly temple-bells!"

The mystery of the great desolate desert stretches, with their
overpowering solemnity of deadly silence, has from time immemorial
exercised a most powerful influence upon the imagination of those who
frequent them; and their optical illusions are often so curious and so
startling as to afford easy explanation of the legends of hidden and
phantom cities, such as are told here and elsewhere, and indeed of
much else beside. Stories similar to "Sheddad's Palace of Irem," and
that of the vanishing city of the Peri in "The Croesus of Yemen," are
frequently met with.

The gloominess of the mountain regions, especially that of the
Sinaitic Peninsula, has also had a profound influence in giving color
to the legendary lore of the middle Orient; and this combination of
desert and mountain influences perhaps largely accounts for what is
distinctively peculiar in the mysticism of the East, and for much that
will be found in this book.




CONTENTS.


                                                  PAGE
     I. The Doom of Al Zameri,                      17

    II. Sheddad's Palace of Irem,                   53

   III. The Mystery of the Damavant,                89

    IV. The Gods in Exile,                         119

     V. King Solomon and Ashmodai,                 161

    VI. The Croesus of Yemen,                      199

   VII. The Fate of Arzemia,                       253

  VIII. The Student of Timbuctu,                   287

    IX. A Night by the Dead Sea,                   327




ILLUSTRATIONS

By WILLIAM SHERMAN POTTS.


                                                  PAGE
      I. "_Touch me not!_" (page 22)      Frontispiece

     II. "_Determined to penetrate into
           the seemingly impenetrable
           wonderland of the Damavant._"            92

    III. "_Like a thunderbolt striking to
           the centre of a hurricane, the
           demon shot down._"                      173

     IV. "_There sprung, like Iris from the
           clouds, a smiling Hebe._"               323




THE WEIRD ORIENT.


The nine tales which follow have a history which is itself not without
interest. The materials have been accumulated during a residence of
many years at Tetuan, Morocco, varied by excursions to places in the
interior where semi-barbarous life may be seen in its pristine
crudeness. In Tetuan I had somewhat exceptional opportunities of
getting into the heart of native life and thought, and I am under
obligations also for contributions received from a venerable
story-teller at Tangier, who had been assistant librarian at the
_Kairouin_ of Fez, the only university of the Moorish Empire. The
tales themselves have been for centuries floating through the
legendary lore which plays so large a part in the intellectual
cloudland of the gorgeous East; my part has been to put them into
English dress, with scrupulous adherence to their substance and, as
far as may be, to their native costume.

Tetuan is a typical Oriental town, beautiful from a distance,
disappointing at a closer inspection, but not devoid of that classic
atmosphere which invests ancient cities in the East with a spiritual
something unfelt in modern centres of culture. Situated at the foot of
the Beni Hosmar, a bold peak of the northern branch of the Atlas
range, it has a population of about twenty thousand souls, is enclosed
by a dilapidated wall, boasts of some fine homes built by wealthy
Tetuani, has a separate _mellah_ for its unfavored Jews, some European
dwellings and cultivated gardens for foreign consuls, a large unclean
square as a market-place, chronically infested by packs of mongrel
dogs fed by Moslem women, and something of an official residence
within the moss-capped walls of a stronghold spoken of as the
_Casbah_. The rest is covered by the Moorish quarter, a bewildering
labyrinth of unpaved, unswept alleys, crooked lanes, the white,
flat-roofed, unwindowed houses often meeting each other overhead, thus
creating dingy tunnels which are utilized as bazaars, with wretched
holes to right and left reserved for sundry wares and offices--the
usual conditions of Moslem towns.

Unattractive as such a conglomeration of semi-barbarous retreats must
appear, neither Pegasus nor the muses would pass them with
indifference. As the descendants of the Moors expelled from Hispania
by their Catholic Majesties, the Tetuani show a degree of refinement
unknown elsewhere in Barbary, and with it survives a taste for higher
things of which poetry is not the least. Tetuan's intellectual
atmosphere is so generally recognized that the present Emir-al-Mumemin
(sole ruler of the true faithful) sent his heir apparent, Hassan, to
be educated at the _Casbah_ by a _taleb_ chosen from the local
aristocracy, in preference to the unfathomed wisdom stored in the wise
heads of the _Kairouin_ at Fez. The minstrel, the fluent story-teller,
the poetic historian, and the fine performer on the double-stringed
_gimreh_, are not unfamiliar figures in Tetuan, provided one knows how
to approach them, which is not so hard as it is to overcome their
reluctance to unbosom themselves before the infidel. Great as is the
Moor's cupidity, it pales before his abhorrence of the foreign
intruder who presumes to pry into his jealously guarded sanctuaries.
Touch him on a point concerning his nebulous legends and traditions
and, like the turtle, he draws in his head, and that is the last you
will see of him, unless you strike the sensitive chord of national
pride by speaking grandiloquently of non-Mussulman heroes and literary
triumphs. Even then Moslem passiveness proves often an immovable
inertia. It has been found possible to provoke the garrulity of the
_taleb_, _adool_ and _fukie_, respectively representing our lawyer,
notary, and man of letters; but there are two characters in Morocco
whom no whirlwind will move to dispute the infidel's claim to a
superior culture, and they are the all-knowing _kadi_ and the _emin_,
the judge and the priest, both deriving their unquestioned authority
from al Koran, and thus cherishing a supreme contempt for the wisdom
of the faithless inspired by the cunning devil. The idea is as old as
Islam that what the Koran reveals not, Allah alone knows.

After many rueful failures to get at the sources of Barbary's
folklore, the author of this book conceived the idea, which happily
met with some success, of creating a social focus sufficiently
attractive to ensnare unwary stragglers of infallible Islamism, such
as itinerant students, beggars, story-tellers and pilgrims, who, being
strangers in the place, might be induced by liberal treatment and a
little policy to impart some glimpses of the precious lore so dear to
one who had set his heart on the acquisition of so promising a
treasure. Did the _Arabian Nights_ and the other works we know exhaust
the vast resources of the Orient's mysteries? Without betraying his
ultimate purpose, the author called a meeting of the foreign
residents, all good friends or acquaintances, and submitted the scheme
of opening a Casino for mutual sociability and the reception of worthy
strangers, sometimes of high rank, who not infrequently cross the
Strait of Gibraltar to see life as it must have been in the
patriarchal age. The suggestion was received with acclamation; the
meeting, nineteen souls in all, organized itself into a body of
subscribing members; officers were elected, rules formulated, and a
liberal subscription list enabled the chairman to proceed at once to
carry out the project, everyone wondering why the thing had never been
thought of before. It took some weeks to perfect matters, when the
pleasure-house was opened with proper ceremony. The windows of the
commodious building looked on the market-place, the Casino being about
a hundred paces from the gate of the _Casbah_, and the institution
soon became an object of talk and wonder, it being the first of its
kind in the tedious annals of Tetuan.

Only a few days after the opening the members experienced the
undelightful surprise of finding one of their distinguished friends,
the Spanish Vice-consul, a stately hidalgo of high lineage, afflicted
by the thirst of Tantalus, with a hydrophobic aversion to water as the
proper means of appeasing it. The cavalier could neither be asked to
resign nor could he be expelled, without creating an unpleasant
sensation, but his drunkenness threatened the very life of the resort.
What was to be done? A secret meeting called for the purpose of
dealing with the problem ended in a unanimous sigh of despondency. But
help was near at hand. Diepo, the caterer, who realized that his
prospects were on the brink of ruin, devised a way out of the dilemma.
Under the pretext that the annoying pest of insects, flying and
creeping, required some remedy, the shrewd caterer prepared a
substance that stuck to one like the Evil One, spread it freely on
large sheets of brown paper, and distributed them judiciously where
they would best serve his purpose. Once in his hazy condition, the
chivalrous Vice-consul was quick in satisfying Diepo's most sanguine
anticipations, picking up by a variety of zigzag evolutions almost
every sticker, and covering himself with the viscous stuff from head
to foot, until the stifled giggle of those present gave way to roars
of laughter. A coarse _jellab_ had to be thrown around the frame of
the inebriate, to take him home without exposure to the ridicule of
outsiders. If the incident did not cure the disgraced representative
of Spanish chivalry of his thirst, it at least rendered it impossible
for him to return to the circle he had scandalized; and as to Diepo's
stratagem, it was commended as a measure devised for self-preservation.

An unexpected triumph for the Casino was the application of three
prominent Moslems for membership, each one, in days bygone, having
been attached to some embassy the Caliph of the Lord now and then
sends to one or another of the European courts. To the manifold
diversions afforded by the institution belonged a sagacious parrot who
astonished the noble Moors by receiving them with the _Muezzin's_ cry:
"_La illaha, il Allah, Mohammed Ressul Allah!_" This confession of
Islam, that there is no God but God, and that Mohammed is His Prophet,
would have edified the Mussulmans, had not the frivolous bird
accompanied his exclamation with screams of profane laughter. At first
puzzled by the unaccountable frivolity of the bird, the most
ingenuous of the Moslems finally solved the riddle by recognizing
therein an expression of felicity the creature derived from uttering
the sacred formula.

Gratuitous music was furnished by an Italian who blew the trombone; by
a French teacher who played the violin; by a Hebrew who gave wind to a
pipe of reeds; and by a Spaniard who harped on the strings of a
colossal bass-viol. In course of a few months the members of the
Casino entertained visitors not alone from Europe and many quarters of
Barbary, but from the more distant Orient, the most of them coming by
the way of Tangier, sometimes called the "white city of the dark
continent." But nothing advertised and dignified that institution more
than the standing offer of twenty-five pesetas to him who should, upon
a fixed evening, regale its members with the most interesting tale,
subject to the critical verdict of three judges, the decision to be
sustained or rejected by a majority of votes. The tale was not to be
wholly fictitious, but should either turn around some historic event,
or be based on some popular tradition or legend current in the lands
of the rising sun. In a country where, thanks to nature's bounty, a
peseta is sufficient to supply a numerous family with food for days,
the prize held out as an inducement proved an object of keen
competition. Once a month the competitors were given the opportunity
of displaying their story-telling talents, and on one occasion a
_fukie_ of Fez, a Jew of Yemen, another one of Jerusalem, and a Parsee
of Bombay, claimed the attention of the interested auditors, in their
endeavors to secure the coveted prize.

Such were the beginnings of this work; it contains in substance all
the tales for which prizes were awarded, but it is only fair to state
that the Parsee was the one to whom the author is mostly indebted for
the mass of his material. Yakoub Malek was a very original eccentric,
of a nature deep, generous, ardent and visionary. A Parsee by birth,
Malek exchanged his Zoroastrian creed for Buddha's ideals, only to
show a later preference for Islam. Driven by a restless temperament,
he traversed Asia throughout its length and breadth, and crossed the
whole north of Africa for the avowed purpose of seeking an audience
with the Pope in Rome, his object being to be initiated into the
mystery of the Catholic Church. Like Marco Polo, Malek was the most
observing of travellers, and his adventures embraced encounters with
monstrous brutes, communion with spirits in the desert of Gobi,
hairbreadth escapes from cyclonic storms, shipwrecks, venomous
reptiles, cannibals and banditti. In the Western hemisphere Malek
would pass for a transcendental spiritualist, claiming, as he did, to
hold intercourse with the spirits of his parents, especially with that
of his father. One dark evening he startled his auditors by producing
a human finger, all dried and shrivelled. He had taken it off
stealthily from the right hand of his father's dead body, after the
vultures had denuded it of flesh, it being the religious custom of the
Parsees to expose their dead to the voracity of that carrion bird, for
which purpose, as is well known, their "towers of silence" are
constructed. That singular rite has its origin in the Zoroastrian idea
that earth is holy and must not be polluted by the decay of human
flesh.--"As often as I long to see my father, I hold this bone closed
in my right hand and shut my eyes, when lo! I see him rise from the
realms of the invisible, ready to commune with me in whispers audible
to my soul," asserted the Oriental with a mystic glow in his eye.

His æsthetic quality betrayed itself in his glowing descriptions of
Balbec and Tadmor, of the prodigious monuments of Egypt, and the
temples and palaces of India. Of his vivid power to portray what his
memory retained, or his imagination conceived, the subjoined rhapsody,
taken as he gave it, may convey an idea. "I see him there, Shah Jahán,
in Jáhnáhád, the Delhi of his fiat, exalted on his throne of thrones,
a blaze of jewelled splendors, set in mockery of the peacock's
feathers, but fairer than that fairest bird, the Moghul's emblem of
star-dotted majesty. Great Akbar's Empire is his, and India's
wealth.--Poor Moghul! From Agra's lovelier court, thy favored home,
the courier speeds to drown thy happiness in gloom. She is no more who
owned thy heart. Thy sweetest Empress, Mumtaza Mahal, the Orient's
loveliness and grace, succumbed to throes which mothers know. The babe
survived her. Delhi mourns. Shah Jahán hurries to his seat of woe. How
dismal looks the city of imperial gardens! How sepulchral its palace
of grandeurs nowhere seen, never heard of, vast and noble, too grand
for man, not unfit for gods!--Death darkens the world, darkens Shah
Jahán's glorious throne-hall. Here his incomparable mate lies cold in
death, crowned and sceptred, as though called to rule in the nether
world, a queen among the dead. All mourn and weep, but the true sorrow
is thine, poor Jahán, with melancholy as thy only friend, thy hope the
grave. That wondrous sepulchre of thine, reared to crown thy love;
there it stands, thy resting-place and hers, the _Taj_, the monumental
blossom of the world, beyond expression beautiful."

Yakoub Malek was a mystic adventurer, and his narrative mystified his
audience. But for that delightful dreamer this book would never have
seen light. His passing out of sight, with an echo that rings in the
ear forever, charmed by a voice that enchanted the soul, suggests the
career of those prophetic wizards who, having stirred the world with
the fire of their breath, departed this life, leaving song and
prophecy to vibrate in the air to the end of time. Should that
picturesque wanderer ever come across these pages, he will have to
forgive the liberties the author has taken with his rhapsodic style
not less than with the version in certain parts of his narrative. Not
everything the dreamy Orient is ready to accept will meet with equal
credence, or even with tolerance, in the sobered Occident. Yet enough
has been retained in these tales to draw the reader from his realistic
surroundings into those weird realms where, unrestrained by the laws
of sublunar existence and the limitations of mortality, the spirit is
allowed to roam in the vast, unencumbered by matter, unhindered by
time and space.

                                             Henry Iliowizi.
    Philadelphia, April, 1900.




THE DOOM OF AL ZAMERI.


Nothing is known in nature which, in awful impressiveness, compares
with the overpowering scenery forever associated with God's revelation
to man. That arm of the Indian Ocean called the Red Sea bifurcates
into the westerly gulf of Suez and the easterly one of Akabah, and the
triangular peninsula thus formed embraces the region that bears the
name of the sky-consecrated Mount Sinai. He who, from an overtopping
height, once surveys those prodigies of this globe's eternal
framework, pile on pile, varied by solitary peaks raising their heads
above the clouds, amidst a confusion of innumerable gorges, _wadys_
and ravines, the red of the stupendous mass interspersed with
porphyry and greenstone, will, apart from their spiritual
reminiscences, bear the impression to the end of his days that he has
been in the very heart of creative omnipotence. About the entire
system there is such a ghostly air, such a terrific frown, as is
recalled by no other chain of crests and cliffs, however bold or
life-deserted. If the bleaker rocks that encompass the basin of the
Dead Sea are more deterring, those of Horeb are of a thrilling
sublimity; and if this is true in broad daylight, night invests them
with an inexpressible mystic awe, intensified by an inexplicable
rumbling and roaring not unlike distant thunder. But all other
feelings are merged in the one of terror when, as it sometimes
happens, a heavy thunderstorm breaks over the wilderness of Sinai.
Rendered impervious by a rarely disturbed aridity, the barren rocks
retain little more water than would the glazed incline of a pyramid,
so that the mountain torrents rush down with cyclonic impetuosity,
uprooting trees and sweeping off settlements, with no trace left of
what man and nature combine to produce.

It was in one of those spasmodic storms that, in the year 1185 after
Mohammed's flight from Mecca, a muffled figure moved cautiously in the
heart of a cloudburst which was accompanied by blinding flashes of
lightning and such thunderbolts as shook the very bedrock of the
mountainous desolation. The Bedouin's watch-fires, nightly seen all
along the gentler acclivities, vanished before the elemental fury; and
though the plain of al-Rahe opened before him, the lonely wanderer
turned his face toward Jebel Musa, or Mount of Moses, betraying his
anxiety to remain unrecognized. Wind and rain forced the man to seek
shelter somewhere, but he seemed to prefer a dark hollow to the sure
hospitality of the Arab's tent. From the heights the torrents came
roaring like waterfalls, carrying along piled up masses of uprooted
tamarisks, palm-trees, struggling sheep and goats; even bowlders were
swept down like pebbles.

While stopping for a moment, irresolute as to the direction he should
take, the muffled figure discerned a human form stranger than his own,
whelmed by the flood and on the point of being either engulfed or
crushed to death by the wreck-encumbered torrent. With a rush which
endangered his life, the mysterious wanderer caught hold of the
forlorn victim, tearing him out of the destructive tide, and as it
happened landing him near a cave which he had not before seen. "Touch
me not!" cried the rescued creature in a voice that startled his
preserver. Yet compared with the rest of his individuality, the voice
was the least appalling of his features. There stood a bare-headed
being, bent with age, pale as a ghost, lean as starvation, wrinkled as
a shriveled hag, shaggy as a bear, his beard descending to his knees,
and his hair to his waist. Death stared from his eyes, misery from his
face; in all an image of hopelessness, tottering toward the grave.
Barely strong enough to drag his limbs, the wretch waddled into the
rayless hole, whining and groaning.

The weather's inclemency would have hardly induced the other to divide
the cave with one whose aspect suggested the tenant of the graveyard,
but the tramp of approaching horses left no time for reflection. Like
a shadow the muffled figure disappeared just in time to escape the
notice of two Mamlooks on horses, who, perceiving the hole, drew in
the reins with an oath: "Allah tear the devil!--If it were not for my
poor horse I would crawl into that black pit to get out of this
infernal tempest.--See this cataract! Why, this beats the Nile!--And
the hawk we are looking for may as well be leagues out of this
wilderness as within it. If we do not hurry to Wady-Feiran, the fever
will settle in my belly. I feel cold about the heart," said one of the
horsemen.

"Give up the thousand purses set on Ali Bey's head?" asked his fellow.

"Give up the chase of the devil!--The slave-Sultan is not within these
black reaches, I say, and we are fools to follow our noses until the
breath is out of our stomachs," answered the other impatiently.

A red zigzag flash tore the clouds; the crash threw the horses on
their haunches. Had not the astounded Mamlooks scampered off like the
wind, the lightning would have revealed to them the object of their
hunt, Egypt's celebrated Sheykh el-Beled, a title tantamount to the
power and dignity of Caliph. Such was Ali Bey who, at the close of a
career of adventure and romance, was a fugitive in the wilds, with a
price set by his enemies upon his head.

"The bloodhounds have lost the spoor of the game, and if my messengers
reach Acre safely, my friend Daher will be out in force; but where
hide till then?" thought Ali Bey, and proceeded to close up the
entrance to his retreat by a pile of rubbish near at hand, darkness
favoring the operation.

"Unless there are snakes in this hole, I shall have an hour's rest,"
said Ali to himself, having completed the hiding wall. A moaning
ululation in the dark reminded him of the other presence he had
enclosed with himself, and his alarm was not lessened by the sudden
glimmer of a something which broke the gloom of the den. Coming as it
did from the deep of the hollow, it could not be mistaken for a flare
of lightning from without. Another glimmer left no doubt as to its
source.

Ali Bey was not a man to quail before anything another man could face;
but here was a phenomenon to stop the pulsation of the stoutest heart. A
burning jewel, not in the palsied hand of a decrepit dotard, but in the
hold of one in the prime of manhood, who resembled the other as closely
as a heifer does its dam. Who was he? A son of the former? Or had there
occurred the miracle of instantaneous rejuvenescence? Or was it Satan
bent on some diabolical performance?--"Man or demon, good or evil power,
whoever thou art, I demand of thee in Allah's name to unfold thy mystery
to me. Art thou he whom I saved from the fury of the elements? He was
nearer a hundred than thirty years; nearer death than life. Thou lookest
like him, but couldst be his grandchild as to age and vigor. Art thou
and he the same? Or art thou an illusion,--peradventure the spirit of
this mountain? If thou art a spirit, thou knowest who I am; if thou art
human I charge thee to speak to Ali Bey, the Sheykh el-Beled of Egypt,
who is waiting for assistance to defeat the conspiracies of his
enemies," spoke Ali with the firmness of despair.

"Sheykh el-Beled," answered the one spoken to in a tone as changed as
his form, "there is less of spirit in me than in thee, yet am I less
human than man ever was, deathless yet mortal, tossed about on the
ocean of time from age to age, century to century, cycle to cycle,
millennium to millennium; denied the peace of soul, the comfort of
hope, the blessing of prayer, the nepenthe of oblivion, yea, the rest
of the grave. Tremble not at the sound of my name. I am _Al Zameri_,
the accursed roamer of the times, doomed since the making of the
golden calf to begin, rejuvenated after a lapse of every hundred
years, anew my unblest career,--homeless, godless, hopeless, shunned,
feared and hated!"

"Al Zameri!" ejaculated Ali, who had moved some steps backward
horrified.

"That is my name; credulity couples it with sin, greed, famine, war,
inundations, hurricanes and pestilence. While thou art within the
reach of my breath, warned by instinct, no man will do thee harm,"
promised the wretched wanderer.

"Allah confound the devil!--Thou wouldst have perished in the flood
if I had not rescued thee; there must be a hidden purpose in the
accident of our meeting. Born a slave, destiny has given me the power
to defy and defeat the Caliph of Islam. My sword has made me sole
ruler over the empire on the banks of the Nile. In open battle I fear
no foe; it is conspiracy and the assassin's dagger that I am fleeing,
and thy thwarting my pathway, or my thwarting thine, means something
to me, Al Zameri. I am in the hand of Allah, the most merciful.--But
speak, thou man of immortal woe, how didst thou provoke the anger of
thy people's God? Why was the golden idol fashioned? Why by thee? What
has been thy experience since?--For few are the Prophet's words in his
reference to thy transgression in the Koran," resumed Ali, making the
best of his unique acquaintance.

"Sheykh el-Beled, thy kindness, not thy service, requires my
acknowledgment. Thy succor was wasted on a man whom perdition would
not have. For three thousand years death shuns me as ruthlessly as I
long to hug it. My tale is a nightmare of three millenniums, taking
me back to ancient Egypt, where I, a Hebrew, was born into abject
slavery. My hot blood resented the taskmaster's rod. In a moment of
rage I struck back one of my tormentors, blow for blow, and was with
other rebels doomed to dig in one of Pharaoh's copper mines on the
coast of Akabah in the valley of Semud. Here many of the Egyptian
idols were fashioned, and here I learned the secret of the priests,
who caused metallic forms to utter sound, to articulate oracular
speech. Certain instruments were skilfully inserted into the interior
of the idol, and the priest manipulated them to the great wonderment
of the populace, who lay prostrate before their all-knowing, warning
or blessing gods. The fraud was guarded by the loss of the tongue that
betrayed it.

"I was young and strong when the joyous tidings penetrated our penal
colony, that a man of God had afflicted Egypt with plague after
plague, insisting that the Israelites be freed from bondage, and we
soon read Egypt's doom in the face of our taskmaster. We conspired,
made a desperate break for liberty, and marked our track with the
blood of those who offered resistance. Love for parents long missed
impelled me to disdain danger. Disguised as an Egyptian, I was
determined to steal into the land of the Pharaohs, when one night my
progress was stopped by a manifestation in the desert, which filled me
with consternation. A pillar of lurid flame, having its base on earth,
advanced eastward with a rotatory motion, its upper end obeying a
force among the stars. It was a glowing meteor, enormous in volume,
endless in height, and terrible to behold, setting earth and heaven on
fire, and bathing the desert in fearful glory. As I hurried to get out
of the pillar's reach, lest I be consumed, I fell in with the vanguard
of my liberated brethren in the rear of their fiery guide. What I saw
and heard thrilled me with awe. A power greater than Osiris lowered
Egypt to the dust, and that was the God of my people. My father was no
more; I embraced my aged mother and one surviving sister, and we wept
for joy.

"Before I had been an hour in the great camp, which extended over
many miles, the cry ran from lip to lip, 'We are pursued! The
Egyptians are at our heels!' Terror and confusion seized the enormous
multitude, men, women and children acting like maniacs, while a throng
of lusty fellows, myself among them, pressed on to see what the Man of
God was going to do. We found him in company of Aaron and Hur, his
countenance beaming, as though it had concentrated the blaze of the
flaming pillar to reflect it in a milder beam. He was Moses, the son
of Amram. In his hand a staff, his gray beard and curly locks setting
off a face of manly firmness, tempered by feminine grace and a
visionary dreaminess, his eyes turned fixedly where the top of the
fire-pillar lost itself in azure. As if in compliance with his tacit
prayer, the prodigious beam swerved from its forward course, wheeled
backward to the right, and thus transferred its base from the front of
the moving camp to its rear, interposing its volume between the
pursuer and the pursued. It was the second watch of the night; we were
within a short hour of the Yam-Mitzrayim, the Egyptian Sea,[1] and a
dense fog left us in doubt as to the distance of the enemy behind us.
The suspense was unbearable, and Moses was besieged by the rebellious
and the craven, who rent the air with reproaches and appeals. He spoke
a few words of encouragement, asking the people to faithfully await
the salvation of the Lord, but his voice was drowned in the
vociferation of the threatening crowd.

    [1] The Red Sea, among the Hebrews, was "the Sea of Egypt."

"At a hint from Aaron five thousand armed men of the tribe of Levi
threw themselves between the great leader and the clamoring mob. It
was a critical moment. The undaunted chief spread out his hands in
prayer.

"The third watch of the night came with a freezing gale; it raised the
fog and revealed a sea lashed by the fury of the growing tempest. It
was dawn when the leader, inspired from On High, struck the flood with
his staff. The waters rose high, broke, scattered in dust, rose again,
tumbled, divided up, and froze, leaving a broad highway dry as the
shore. With his brother the leader entered the depth followed by the
people, till the whole multitude found themselves between the icy
walls, emerging on the opposite shore happy and jubilant.

"Just now the blush of morning in the east was eclipsed by a wave of
effulgence west of the Sea of Egypt, and as we turned our eyes thither
we were amazed to behold the burning pillar replaced by a sun-crowned
power that illumined the heavens with his dazzling panoply and his
sword of many flames. That presence sealed the doom of the Egyptians.
In their impetuous onward rush they plunged into the jaws of death.
The miraculous road was not meant to give them passage; and no sooner
were they in the heart of the dry abyss than, by a touch of the
leader's staff, the frozen walls, melted by the sun-crowned power,
gave way to the devouring sea, burying Egypt's mighty army. The air
shivered with the multitudinous shout of joy sent up by our myriads of
grateful fugitives. Song, dance and praise commemorated the great
event, to be shortly followed by one greater than anything I know of
in the annals of man.

"Ah, let me come to the cause of my doom! What happened between the
crossing of the Red Sea and the Day of Revelation is on record, but
eternity will not efface the picture burned into my memory of what I
have, thousands of years ago, witnessed in this wilderness of Zin.

"After a short encampment hereabout, the leader, he the chief of
chiefs, made it known that in three days the Majesty Divine would
reveal Himself and His truth on the top of Sinai, the interval to be
spent in purifying preparations.

"As though all the earthquakes and thunders of the ages were to spend
their furious energy within the space of one daybreak, a convulsed
earth and a bursting firmament roused a terrified people from their
sleep, summoning them to gather at the foot of the fire-belching,
quaking, night-shrouded mountain, there to receive the first
commandments of the Torah, the Law of the world. They obeyed the
summons, but succumbed to the supernatural manifestations. Himself
unseen, the voice of the leader was heard from the thick of the
clouds, communing with Omnipotence, the blasts of mighty trumpets
intermingling with the bellowing, rumbling and growling of the roused
elements. Suddenly a profound silence superseded the universal
agitation. Clearly stood out the apex of the mountain, clear spread
the horizon; and ear, heart and soul were entranced by the ineffable
melody of utterance which came floating from the empyrean. Like the
symphony of an angelic chorus, the Ten Commandments vibrated
throughout the ethereal spaces, reclaiming the people from their
torpor, to be overawed by a wonder exceeding anything they had yet
seen. With a background of azure, and the three summits of the
Sinaitic range as base, there spread in the clear infinite blue the
likeness of inexpressible Majesty in the transcendental shape of a
sovereign, crowned with supernal glory,--compassion and benign grace
radiating from His dimly discernible features; in His hand an open
scroll, covering half the firmament, and showing the Decalogue in
sunny splendor, each letter proving but the reflex of a yet grander
copy visibly set in stars far back in the deepest heavens.

"A season of tumultuous rejoicing followed the closing of that
soul-thrilling scene, and the emancipated slaves abandoned themselves
to indulgences bordering on license. In the whirl of excitement nobody
noticed the absence of the venerated prophet, who had not been seen
nor heard from since the Day of Revelation, and his family and closest
associates were as ignorant of his whereabouts as the rest of the
people. But when a whole month had passed by without a token of the
prophet's being or doing, the craven-hearted mass took umbrage,
fearing they had been deserted both by Moses and his God. Aaron was
called upon to allay their apprehensions, but he proved unequal to the
exigency. Pressed to supply them with a power to worship, and somebody
to lead them, instead of bidding them to have patience and wait, in a
moment of weakness he yielded, suggesting that all the golden
ornaments of the women be delivered to him, that he might fashion for
them a god. If the High-priest hoped that the women would not
sacrifice their jewelry, he was soon undeceived. And I was at hand to
lure him into the most heinous of human transgressions.

"Herein centres the enormity of my guilt. Aaron could have never
fulfilled his promise had not an evil spirit prompted me to offer him
my service in moulding for him a golden calf after the pattern of
Egypt's idolatry. Doubting my ability to materialize what I proposed,
he gave his assent, and my experience in metal work enabled me to
produce a golden calf with the trick of articulating words.

"When the people saw the image and heard it declare itself their god,
they went wild with delight, Aaron himself catching the infection. An
altar was built, a feast proclaimed, sacrifices offered, and the
masses delivered themselves up to orgies.

"The riot of debauch was broken up by the unexpected arrival of the
prophet. With his countenance shining like the sun, he rushed down
from the mountain, dropped and shattered the tablets, which bore the
Commandments he had received from the hand of God, and reduced the
idol to powder which he scattered to the winds. Aaron exonerated
himself by pointing to the madness of the people, and to me as the
real culprit.--'This Azazel has brought the great sin on the head of
the people,' cried he, his eye fixed in fierce hatred on my detested
self. What could I advance in extenuation of my devilish authorship?

"Severe punishment was meted out. Four thousand prominent offenders
fell under the sword, but I was singled out for a special fate as a
warning to coming ages. 'Al Zameri shall not die; Al Zameri shall
henceforth wander like Cain, shunned, feared, cursed and hated; Al
Zameri shall, at the lapse of a hundred years, revisit the scene of
his crime, shall be restored to his present condition, and thus go on
and on, until time shall wipe out the memory of his evil deed,' was
the verdict I heard. The prophet spoke it under the spell of
inspiration, and I was set free.[2]

    [2] This legend of the Wandering Jew, which so far as I am
    aware has never before been printed, except for some few
    references in the Koran, is probably the precursor of the one
    currently familiar among Christians, and it will be seen
    places the date of the crime that entailed perpetual
    punishment at some 1500 years earlier. To my mind it
    possesses much the greater psychological interest. The Koran
    says:

    "And in like manner al Zameri also cast in what he had
    collected, and he produced unto them a corporeal calf which
    lowed. And al Zameri and his companions said, This is your
    god and the god of Moses.... Moses said unto al Zameri, What
    was thy design, O Zameri? He answered, I knew that which they
    knew not, wherefore I took a handful of dust from the
    footsteps of the messenger of God, and I cast it into the
    molten calf; for so did my mind direct me" (Surah 20).

    The presence, and especially the touch, of the outcast is
    supposed to entail disaster, of which he is bound to warn
    those with whom he is brought into contact; and it is
    therefore that Al Zameri cries out to his rescuer (page 22)
    "Touch me not." The reference in the Koran is, "Moses said,
    Get thee gone; for thy punishment in this life shall be, that
    thou shalt say unto those who shall meet thee, Touch me not"
    (Surah 20).

    The roaming Al Zameri has in Oriental folklore a counterpart
    in the wandering Cain, who also is supposed to live forever.

"And free I was, and free I am to roam forever like a mad beast,
driven hither by the fury to be transformed at the appointed hour into
the young man that I was when malicious folly stamped me as the
outcast of the human race.

"That same hour I conceived an irrepressible impulse to seek the vast,
the void, the desert, the jungle, the swamp,--the unlighted cavern,
the place of graves, the ruin,--evading the blessed haunts of man,
abhorring sunshine and courting darkness. Daylight blinds me as it
does the owl; the sight of gold confounds, its touch burns me. The
ferocious beast flees at my approach; the serpent hisses and writhes
away. However teeming the region with animal life, however vocal with
the song of bird, my passing turns it into a soundless, lifeless wild.
I speed with the wind, sweep with the storm, welcome the lightning's
flare, the thunder's growl, rage with the elements, curse with the
fiends of black Abaddon. The tiger's den is my shelter, my pillow a
coil of venomous reptiles. I throw myself into the jaws of the lion,
swallow the essence of poison,--it does not avail me. Death is in
league with all creation against me. If I try to end my misery by
falling into a chasm, I am lighter than air. Water will not drown me,
fire will not burn me, steel will cut my flesh but spares my life,
and my dread is life--time--time, endless, hopeless, hateful
years,--decades, cycles, millenniums! Such is the sky-ruled destiny of
Al Zameri!"

"Horrible is thy fate! Thine is hell on earth, O, son of guilt, who
didst ingraft on the race an evil growth,--the worship of gold! Ah,
the glittering fetich! What crimes are not traceable to his glossy
fascinations!--But the potency of prayer, the tear of remorse dear to
Allah the most merciful, the King of the Day of Judgment, are they
denied thee?" inquired Ali Bey.

"Prayer, prayer, man's inward heaven, the unction of life, the solace
of the soul,--prayer, the heart-feeding stream, with God as its
fountainhead and influx, swelled by springs unrevealed and currents
vainly searched," exclaimed Al Zameri, striking the palms of his hands
together with a clap of pain;[3] "prayer would just as readily
commingle with my being as Eden's blessed rivers with the flames of
hell. What heaven and earth reveal of the wonderful and holy is
deterring to me, whom neither the sublime nor the beautiful inspires,
filled as I am with doubt as to whether there be mercy ample enough to
cover my guilt.

    [3] The familiar Oriental gesture expressing painful emotions
    is to throw the arms wide apart, and bring the palms of the
    hands together with a distinct, and often resounding, clap;
    then clasping the hands, tremulous with the stress of
    feeling.

"Yea, once,--but once,--long before the Orient felt the Roman's iron
grip, my lips, prompted by the whisper of a cherub, stammered prayer;
and with that inspiration died my feeble hope, leaving a seething
caldron in a heart of flint. Ah, from my gloom of hell I had a glimpse
of paradise.--Thou hast heard of Balbec's ancient glories, of which
her magnificent ruins tell; I saw her in her palmy days, a city of
palaces for merchant princes to dwell in, the rival of Tyre, Tadmor
and Damascus. Perched on the side of the Anti-Libanus, high above the
fertile plain of Sahlat-Ba'albec, and encircled by groves and gardens
watered by the valley's never-failing spring of Ra'as-el Ayn, Balbec
gloried in rearing great monuments, while the temples dedicated to her
gods stood among the marvels of the world. Whatever was precious,
useful, or ornamental, was to be had in the bazaars of Balbec.
Caravans carried invaluable treasures through her gates, and the
royalties she levied enabled her to display a princely munificence in
her domestic affairs. With Syria's fluctuating fortunes, Balbec
realized every change, but her deadliest enemy was the earthquake's
fearful visitation. Often did I wish to see creation sink in chaos,
and myself engulfed in the universal wreckage; but my attempt to find
death in one of Balbec's catastrophes, instead of bringing
deliverance, brought heaven within my touch, with redoubled anguish as
the sequel. Satan has his sport with Al Zameri.

"My memory is aglow as I recall the day of lurid skies, an atmosphere
saturated with oppressive vapors, an ominous fluttering of birds, and
a spasmodic rumbling, as of explosions underground. Too familiar with
the symptoms to misunderstand the nature of the impending disturbance,
I was thankful to be near Balbec, in whose ruins I hoped to be buried.
Quick as my limbs could carry me, I hurried to the doomed city, and
entered it through one of her gates, which gave me a full view of her
famous Great Temple. Terror distracted the multitude, who rushed
about, tumbling one against the other, and bellowing like frightened
cattle. Repeated shocks opened gaping crevices in the ground,
swallowing houses and closing over man and brute. Down came monumental
shafts of skilful workmanship; buildings of massive masonry were
either lying in heaps, the graves of their inmates, or stood cracked,
ready to tumble at the next upheaval. Death was lurking everywhere.
Little affected by the wrecks around me, my only thought was to corner
death where escape was wellnigh impossible, and I rushed up the grand
flight of steps, which took me to the eastern portico of the
stupendous edifice, landing me in a large, hexagonal space. It had the
dimensions of a court,--which it was not, but a vestibule with one
main entrance and two side-doors to the great court, a peristyle
circumscribed by columns of artistic chiselling, back of which were
numerous recesses adorned by statues of gods. With no one to question
my intrusion into the sacred fane, I stood undetermined and
purposeless, when a subterraneous force shook the rock-built
foundation of the entablature, which descended with a crash, wrecking
the fine statuary by the weight of the fragments. A scream of horror
drew me irresistibly in the direction of the voice that uttered it,
where, behind a pedestal, I saw a damsel stretched on the floor
writhing in convulsions. Bending over the form and raising it from the
ground, I held in my arms a being too perfect to be mortal, too
substantial to be divine. She was unhurt, except for fright, and,
bearing her to the open quadrangle of the peristyle, I seated myself
on the floor, allowing her head and shoulders to rest on my lap. 'Art
thou the goddess to whom this temple is dedicated?' breathed I. In
answer a pair of eyes opened wide, to my indescribable confusion, eyes
that would tame the tiger and charm the hydra; but they soon closed
again.

"Sheykh, I have seen Sisygambis, Persia's imperial mistress, the dame
of Darius, her cheek shaming the jewelled tiara meant to grace
majesty. On the tide of the Cydnus, on a galley, carved, gilded, and
inlaid with ivory, gliding to the rhythmic stroke of polished oars,
under sails of silk, I saw Cleopatra reclining on the deck, in the
shade of a star-spangled canopy, arrayed as Venus, in the midst of
voluptuous music, with her women dressed as nymphs, and little boys as
Cupids; she moved me no more than did a score of others famed for
beauty in their time. But stirred and stricken was I by the matchless
damsel chance had thrown in my way, and there I sat intoxicated by a
quaff from some heavenly spring thitherto unknown to me. 'If thou wert
mine, eternity! what would it matter to me whether the heavens favor
me or curse?' muttered I half audibly.

"Once more her opened eyelids laid bare the fountains of bliss, and
once more I asked, 'Art thou that one whom the denizens of Balbec
worship?'

"Like one waking from a vision she raised her head, raised herself,
rose to her height a majestic figure, and, looking down to me with an
expression of awe, she answered my question with a question: Whether I
was one of the gods to whose worship her father had consecrated her?
'I am the priestess of chaste Istar. Only a god could save me as thou
didst,' cried the maiden, sinking prostrate before me.

"A momentary rocking of the entire structure left but few of the
remaining columns erect. The others brought down the Corinthian
capitals and the heavy entablature with a tremendous fall, and the
great court was one mass of _debris_ scattered in every direction.

"The eastern portico being barred by a confused pile of broken
columns, the only escape left open was the western end, and hither I
carried the fainting priestess, issuing with my burden from the wreck,
and finding myself before another building still more beautiful and
not yet greatly injured. This was Balbec's Temple of the Sun, a
blossom of architecture and sculpture, profusely ornamented by figures
of gods and heroes, and finished with a great lavishness of skill and
art.

"It was the end of the day, and anxious to shun observation I labored
up the stately stairway to seek a refuge in the safer place, not on
my own account but for the sake of the precious creature in my charge.
Through a lofty portal I reached two staircases to my right and left,
each one leading to the upper story, which was the Temple proper. Here
I stopped to take breath, the burden having proved too much for me,
and here again I had to look into those open eyes that beamed
unutterable things for me.--'Save me, save me, and I will praise and
worship thee, god of the sun,' whispered the deluded creature.

"'Be undeceived, fair ministress, I am no god but a man of flesh and
blood and untold woes, woes unknown to any mortal but myself,' said I.

"'Thou no god, and a man of untold woes?--Thou art unlike any mortal
in look, and who sent thee hither to save me, all others having
deserted this fane, priest and priestess fleeing for life? Surely thou
art more than mortal, thus to face death undeterred?'

"'Let not a guilt-encumbered fugitive practice deception on thee,
ministress of Istar. Thou art right, alas! I am not mortal; but cursed
to wander and suffer, because of a great sin committed thousands of
years ago,' cried I, and briefly enlightened her as to my nature and
my doom. Tender compassion radiated from her immaculate countenance
as, seizing my hand with a hold that thrilled my frame with ravishing
delight, she spoke these words:

"'O, let me alleviate thy suffering by sharing thy misery, poor,
erring man, who didst offend Zicara and his progeny! Yea, I will pray
in thy behalf!--Hear me, Zicara, the all-powerful, and thou, Ea, the
holder of life and knowledge, the ruler of the abyss, the king of the
rivers and gardens, the mate of Bahu, who begot Bal Merodach,--hear me
and restrain the seven evil spirits from besetting Al Zameri, but send
the good ones to placate his conscience, that he have rest and peace,
after an atonement long and awful! Yea, my life for his, Zicara, if
propitiation cannot otherwise be had, since he has imperilled his life
for mine!'

"Even while these fervid words dropped from the sweet lips of the
kneeling supplicant, the roving mania seized me deliriously. I turned
my face toward the nearest exit, but felt my garment caught by the
hands that had been folded in prayer.--'Flee not hence before I kiss
the hands which brought me succor,' cried the maiden passionately
stirred. Burning kisses covered my hands; a tingling woe permeated the
core of my being; I kissed the head, the cheek, the mouth of the one
in the wide world, who had offered to share my fate, had offered her
life for mine. But adamantine chains could not check my madness to
fly; I broke away from her embrace, whose lamentations cut into my
heart.

"A pack of hell-hounds yelping at my heels would have added little to
the mad pace that carried me to the dreary haunts of the
mountains,--the wailing of the girl, and her image, following me as
new fuel to feed the fire of despair. Broken by overwhelming
wretchedness, I fell where a steep rock barred my way, and then, after
a chain of tearless cycles, I wept,--yea, and prayed for mercy,--ah!
to be delivered as it may please Him, whom I displeased!

"With sleep came a figure clad in supernatural brightness,--'Matatron
the messenger of grace, who spreads man's prayers before the Throne,
speaks to thee, Al Zameri! Between thy prayer and His Mercy stands a
world of evil, fostered by the fetich of thy making. Thou hast seduced
the people chosen to redeem mankind. When the race shall deem the
chase of gold a thing as base as rapine, as vile as lust,--then will
the fever of thy soul abate. Till then live on, the symbol of
insatiate greed, a living Sodom, weltering in the fetid pool of
spiritual stagnancy!'" And Al Zameri was silent, burying his wretched
face in his hands.

"Truly, gold in itself is not an evil; it is the root of the world's
evil, the leprosy of the heart, incurable as the lung's consumption
that reddens the cheek while it drains the life, and thy guilt in
reference thereunto is as dark as thy punishment is great," spoke Ali.
"I am that country's lord where I have been slave; courage has done
much for me, but gold the most,--yea, and the worst to make woman
foul, and man her villain. Here Mammon is the king of kings. Ali Bey
is a fugitive from assassins bought for gold, and Islam's Caliph
depends for sovereign ease and safety less on valor and loyalty than
on the bribe. Thou hast raised gold to be an idol, on whose altars
man's heart, his honor and his peace, and woman's virtue, are too
often sacrificed. Therefore, run thy course, Al Zameri; fulfil great
Allah's decree, that man take heed lest in His just anger He drown
this world in a boiling flood of liquid gold!"

A few stones removed from the entrance of the cave enabled the cursed
roamer to slip out like a phantom, and with him passed the storm,
leaving a chill around the heart of the Bey.

"Allah akbar! This meeting forebodes Ali's downfall, I fear. It is my
evil star that caused the wretch to thwart my way," said Ali Bey to
himself. Subsequent developments proved his presentiment prophetic; in
an ambush placed for his destruction, the celebrated Sheykh met his
death.




SHEDDAD'S PALACE OF IREM.


Sheddad and Sheddid, the sons of Ad and the grandsons of Uz, acquired
great fame in Hadramaut, where they saw light in Ahkaf, a region of
deserts bordered by deserts, desolate as Hejaz, sterile as Tehamah,
burning as Dahna "the red," frightful as Gobi, and less explored than
Sahara. The ancient Hebrews spoke of Hadramaut as _Hazarmaveth_, the
"court of death," and this sepulchral name is fully accounted for by
its black rocks, which here and there show head above the sifting
sand-ridges, like so many colossal coffins in the midst of the
gloomiest of graveyards. Here the tribe of Ad not alone prospered, but
accomplished things forever memorable in tale and song.

While traversing the desert of Han-Hai Marco Polo reports to have seen
ghostly apparitions; and heard them speak, calling people by their
names, and startling the drivers of the caravan by such strange
noises as the tramp of horses, the beating of drums, and the blowing
of trumpets and other musical instruments. The Oriental counts those
spectral manifestations in the deserts as one of the many aspects of
the world's spiritual mystery, and the ancient Arab never entered a
waste in the dark without this propitiatory expression of confidence
uttered with the solemnity of prayer: "I fly for refuge unto the
prince of this region, that he may protect me against the foolish of
his domain."

It is the Bedouin's conviction that countless ages before the creation
of Adam myriads of Jinn or genii were created of fire, and enjoyed the
blessings of this world under successive rulers who bore the generic
name of Suliman. These airy creatures, however, being of inferior
quality, are not alone subject to mortal wants, like eating, drinking
and propagating, but are corruptible and perishable; so that when
their wickedness provoked Allah's anger, he ordered Eblis to drive
them into the most inhospitable deserts, where they are kept in rigid
seclusion, but not without a certain latitude of action. For they are
permitted to exercise their potential energies, and indulge their
various inclinations for good or for evil, some being malignant,
others beneficent. The fairy-like Peri, the gigantic Div, and the
sinister Tacwins or fates, are referred to in the Koran, which fact
renders doubt in their existence out of the question.

Now, the secret of Ad's power, which enabled him to flourish and
multiply in the heart of desolation, was a host of Jinn placed at his
command by his father Uz, the son of Aram, who was the son of Shem,
one of Noah's three offspring. With superhuman agents to carry out his
designs, Ad conceived the idea of building the most stupendous palace
on earth in the wilderness of Aden, and he intimated the project to
his older son Sheddad. Sheddad's imagination was set aflame, but the
vastness of the scheme rendered its realization somewhat doubtful, the
nature of the resources notwithstanding.

"Thy plan, father, surpasses in magnitude that of the Tower of Babel,
but my ambition would surround the grandest palace under the heavens
with a garden like unto Paradise, provided thy means are ample enough
to do it," said the firstborn of Ad.

"Palace and garden shall rise by invisible hands!" exclaimed Ad
boastfully, and proceeded with the sketching of his design on the
sand.

The palace was to be reared on a plateau as high as the highest land
of Yemen, should have sufficient accommodation for his progeny
multiplied a thousandfold, and its surpassing feature was to be a hall
of superb magnificence, with room for the throne of a king to stand in
the midst of his court and his warriors, the grand edifice to be
enwreathed by a garden like Eden, and to be accessible and visible
only at the royal bidding.

Ad's fabulous dream was again improved upon by his inventive son, who
proposed to have a city of princely dwellings cluster around the
palace, the garden to surround the whole, and to be enclosed by a wall
with stately portals. The additional feature commended itself to Ad,
but the execution of the scheme was accompanied by an element of
danger of which its projectors were unaware, and which proved fatal
to its originator. Believing the hour ripe for the work to begin, Ad
repaired one dark night, unaccompanied, to the dismal region to set
himself aright with the potent instruments he had depended on for the
actualization of his dream. Whether unnerved by the dismal dreariness
of the desert, or confused by an instinctive dread of the supernatural
machinery to be set in motion, the conjuror uttered the wrong formula,
and the sequel was appalling. For instead of the beaming spirits he
expected to bow to him, a hideous legion wagged their tails, having
descended on him like a tempest, frowning and grinning, their eyes
darting fury and hatred. Ad had unwittingly disturbed the dreaded
Tacwins, who would have torn him to pieces but for the mystic signet
he held in his hand, the talisman which, in a later age, enabled
Solomon to capture Ashmodai and rule over myriads of genii. The terror
of the moment, however, paralyzed the heart of the unfortunate wizard.
Ad was found dead, and was greatly mourned by his family and the tribe
that bore his name.

Undeterred by the tragic end of his father, Sheddad, now the
acknowledged head of his tribe, and the owner of the potent seal, took
his brother Sheddid into the secret, asserting it to be their filial
duty to complete at all hazard what their sire had begun. Sheddid was
not of the adventurous type; he preferred the ease of the tent to
enterprises fraught with danger, and besought his brother to desist
from an attempt which had already proved fatal, declaring himself
content to be simply one of the tribe. Sole master of the situation,
however, Sheddad burned with impatience to see his dazzling vision
assume the form of reality; and wholly reckless as to danger,
proceeded to act in the manner planned by his father and himself. He
proved more successful than Ad in putting himself in communication
with the friendly Jinn subject to his will, and astonished them with
the sketch he drew of what he meant them to accomplish for him; for by
this time the previous outline was even more expanded, and his
commands were set forth with irrevocable authority.

"You are required to build for me a city never to be equalled, still
less to be excelled, by anything art or skill may attempt to produce;
it is to be the home of a people a thousand times more numerous than
the tribe of Ad, and its crowning marvel is to be my palace,--of a
splendor befitting a king of kings, and of an amplitude to afford room
for a great court and an army.[4] Grounded on a rocky foundation on a
level with Yemen's highlands, the city's walls and dwellings shall be
white as alabaster, but the palace shall be of onyx, trimmed with gold
and set with gems. Twelve gorgeous halls shall be named after the
signs of the zodiac, all opening upon one grander than them all,
beneath a dome lucent as the firmament, illumined by a sun, a moon,
and scintillating stars, moving at the king's will around his throne
that shall blaze with what is most precious and brilliant in those
jewels which rival the lustre of the constellations. Vaults for
treasures, apartments for feasting, pavillions for ease, recesses for
love, grottoes for coolness, cisterns for bathing, colonnades for
pleasure, balconies for survey, and seats for delight, shall make my
palace inimitable for all time. And city and palace shall be embedded
in an Eden of foliage, blossom and fruit, animated by birds of
lustrous plume and sweetest song. Tax your skill to build more perfect
than I know to ask for, but never less; and let your magic make the
retreats inaccessible without the pleasure of the king," closed
Sheddad, inwardly sorry that his inventive faculty lagged behind his
vaulting ambition to be unexcelled in grandeur and glory.

    [4] The Koran has this reference to the Palace of Irem,
    showing that it was already a tradition before the time of
    Mohammed:

    "Hast thou not considered how the Lord dealt with Ad, the
    people of Irem, adorned by lofty buildings, the like whereof
    hath not been erected in the land?" (Surah 89; "The
    Daybreak.")

    That Sheddad, having planted a garden in imitation of the
    heavenly paradise, had been smitten by lightning on his way
    hither, is another variation of the widely known legend.

"Master of the potent seal," replied the chief of the shining files,
"thy behest is our concern. In eleven nights Sheddad shall stamp our
work with his approval." Elevated in his own estimation to the rank of
a king of kings, and conscious of a power equal to that of a god, it
required but a slight incentive for Sheddad's vanity to overleap
itself, and infernal Eblis was at hand to furnish it. In the guise of
an angel, the devil bewildered the architect of Irem by saluting him
as a god.--"Born of a woman, thine is the homage due to a prince of
the skies, before whom spirits bow, exalted Sheddad!" spoke the
Satanic deceiver with a profound salaam, and rose on his mighty wings
to vanish in the void of the desert.

After this Sheddad would not have been astonished to hear the stars
proclaim his majesty, but he was surprised when, having listened to
his marvellous tale of the city the Jinn would build for him, Almena,
his favorite wife, beheld an evil omen in the fact that, in his plan
of sumptuous building, Sheddad had neglected to provide for the
worship of the only true God.

"How could Sheddad forget him who created the heavens and the earth,
the stars and the spirits, and whose just wrath wiped out the people
in the time of our ancestor Noah? God's temple ought to rise high
above thy palace, or it will not stand, even according to the prophecy
of Hud, thy uncle, whose words were confirmed by signs from On High,"
expostulated Almena. "Woman, thy Sheddad is a god, and shall be
worshipped because of his potency, and the favors he may bestow on
those who shall please him. A heavenly power paid me homage before I
entered this tent, and in eleven nights the tribe of Ad will see the
wonder of the world. My palace shall be their temple, my throne their
altar, thyself their goddess, and Sheddad their god!" cried the
infatuated chief.

Almena was a frail daughter of Eve, and Sheddad's picture of their
prospective divinity, sustained as it was by an angel's confirmation,
converted her to share her husband's madness. The thoughts that
occupied them during the day came in weird visions during the
night,--throngs kneeling in adoration before them, burning incense and
wafting expiatory invocations, and kings hurrying from the ends of the
earth to receive their crowns and sceptres from Sheddad's grace. On
the tribe, it was deemed best that their chief's godship should burst
as a revelation.

While the tribe of Ad were soundly asleep in their tents, a man and a
woman slipped cautiously out of the encampment. They were mounted on
two fast dromedaries, and glided like spectres into the heart of the
desert, buried in night and silence. Once more Eblis played his
infernal trick on the deluded Sheddad, now in company of his bewitched
Almena, by a renewed mock-adoration offered as by a winged cherub. For
it is hardly necessary to state that the infatuated couple were on
their way to the abode of their future felicities. They had not been
riding many hours before the level, blank face of the waste softened
into undulations scantily covered with that vegetation which the camel
alone is capable of digesting,--its gastric capacities being almost
equal to that of the ostrich,--and the outlook indicated rising
ground. A stretch had to be crossed punctuated by black rocks in
ever-increasing number, until the wilderness looked a stony maze of
dismal projections worn smooth by the grinding sands, ever moving
with the gusts of hot air; and the East indicated daybreak when
Sheddad and Almena ascended a height from which they could survey a
vast horizon, bordered on the south-east by sea, but presenting
otherwise the sterility of Arabia Deserta. A curious and perplexing
paralysis of speech deprived them of the interchange of sentiments,
and an uphill advance of a mile or so brought them before an arched
portal of imposing stateliness, opening on a great city, half-hidden
from view by the sylvan and floral wealth of an Eden.

Husband and wife exchanged a look of amazement, strangely debarred
from an audible articulation of feeling just when there was so much to
be wondered at. There being nobody to hinder, no one to welcome them,
Sheddad and Almena tied their brutes to the glittering handles of the
brazen gates, and proceeded to take sovereign possession of what they
considered their indisputable domain. The ascending avenue before them
might have been called "The Vista of Enchantment." Sinuous in its
course, its moss-bedded windings were bordered by crystal rivulets
which came down, broken by impediments, in bounding cascades, the
water teeming with fish of tints recalling the changeful blushes of
Aurora. Towering trees shaded, with their intertwining crowns of
delicious leafage, a tropical exuberance of lesser growths weighed
down with luscious fruit or glowing and sparkling with soft colors
forming part of a delightful disorder of shrubs and vines, climbing,
winding, crawling, hanging and blooming, but receding here and there
to uncover the placid mirror of a lake limpid as beryl, or a spring of
the coolest and purest liquid, all approachable by a hundred
intercrossing pathways, lined and so softly carpeted that the
unsandaled foot paced as on a silken rug of the finest texture. Here
the bulbul's note was drowned in a concert of rival warblers, whose
melodies were as sweet as their feathers were coruscant.

With ravenous greed Sheddad and Almena surrendered to the garden's
temptations, swallowing great quantities of precious fruit, but
feeding a hunger that seemed to grow with its glutting; nor did the
cooling drink they greedily imbibed allay their parching thirst. But
the whetted appetite rendered the sensuous enjoyment resistlessly
fascinating; and, the choice of the food being seemingly unlimited,
husband and wife would have abandoned themselves altogether to
physical indulgence, had not an overpowering sight burst on them, like
a vision from a suddenly opened heaven.

They were on the point of ascending a terrace laid out with all the
arts of magic, and enwreathed with all the bounties of nature, when
they reached the entrance to an enormous square, superbly enclosed by
what appeared a score of palaces blended in one mass of variegated
splendors, the one at the opposite end overtopping the others by a
dome which blazed in the sun's radiance, as though set with
carbuncles. Symmetrically proportionate to the size of the grand space
ran a depression defined by a line of artistic shafts of alabaster,
capped with globes of burnished gold studded with gems, and rising
majestically above a grove of enameled green, thick with odoriferous
bloom. In the heart of the depression was a basin filled with a
rushing water as transparent as the sky, and enlivened by star-dotted
swarms of the finny tribes. It was an azure stream in an Elysian
garden, in the heart of a succession of edifices far beyond the limits
of human resources and ingenuity. Except for the feathered musicians,
and the zephyr which stirred the air and foliage, not a sound was
heard, nor a creature to be seen. The overawing majesty of an
architecture that dwarfed pantheons into monuments of man's vain
endeavor to imitate the inimitable, and the gorgeousness which could
not be thought of without remembering the limitations of earthly art
and treasures however great, justified to himself Sheddad's conceit
that he was more than human, a consciousness now at last fully shared
by Almena. Still unable to express their wonderment in words, they
resorted to gestures and grimaces, as though the tale of Babel was to
have a sort of counterpart in the story of Sheddad's palace of Irem.
And their wonder rose in intensity as, entering the left wing of the
palace by a sublime portico, the lofty vaulted spaces, communicating
by exquisitely carved arches, imparted the illusion that the ceilings
were as high as heaven and sparkled with real stars.

An implied welcome was extended to them in the first apartment by a
banquet set in a begemmed service of golden vessels,--dainties and
beverages fit for gods. Hours busily spent at the sumptuous board did
neither appease their hunger nor quench their thirst. Every morsel and
every quaff sharpened the craving for more. When they succeeded in
tearing themselves from the table's inexhaustible dishes, their
progress through the palatial spaces consumed more time than they were
aware of, the fascinations being as varied as they were marvellous.
For incomputable as was the wealth, and lavish the ornamental art
bestowed on each and every room traversed, their main charm lay in the
optic illusions, causing Sheddad and his companion to laugh with
amusement and wonder, to scream with astonishment, or to shudder with
horror.

Yielding to a woman's inquisitiveness, Almena was always a little in
advance of her husband, always eager to be yet more surprised, and her
eagerness was fully gratified. Once when a scream of laughter brought
Sheddad to his wife's side, he found that what she had mistaken for
clear water, rippled by a breeze, was indeed the solid floor of a long
green archway, imparting the illusion of a stream flowing under cover
of beautiful trees; Almena had prepared to cross it, with her sandals
off, and her skirts raised, imagining the water to wave gently in a bed
of golden sand. Here, again, she recoiled with terror from the glaring
eyes of a crouching lion, ready to fly at her in a rage; there she
stood paralyzed at the sight of the deadly _rukta_, rolled up in a coil
on an imperial divan, with her fangs pointed, and her eyes glaring. In
this manner the most formidable species of the animal kingdom faced
them in threatening postures throughout the entire palace, often
environed by their natural conditions, always in a pose of aggressive
ferocity. Yet all this notwithstanding, Sheddad affected the lofty
bearing of a god in his realm; strode haughtily along the mysteriously
echoing halls, the echoes of which ere long mixed with strains of music
sweet beyond expression. Drawn by the swelling harmonies, they
descended a stately flight of stairs landing on a platform whence,
descending another flight, they beheld themselves at the extreme end of
an enormous cavern bathed in a translucent haze of an unearthly
luminousness. The muffled rumble of a distant waterfall blended
enchantingly with waves of melody that floated incomprehensibly through
the weird mazes of the honey-combed hollow extending endlessly in
cavernous, inaccessible spaces, passes and galleries. Availing
themselves of conveniently protruding stepping-stones, the explorers
ventured into the nethermost ranges, fairly brightened by the reflex of
a stalactitic display, grotesque in shape, bulky in size, and
indefinable in color, every known hue blending into a magic play of
ever-changing spectra, and suggesting the idea that the palace above
was the blossom of which the underground masses were the roots. Here
they stood bewitched by the symphonies they could not account for, and
by a scenery human genius may dream of, but never imitate.

While divided between the delights of the ear and the charm of the
eye, Sheddad and Almena lost no sight of a crystal barrier behind
which flowed a clear water alive with luminous fish, and through which
they had a glimpse of things above, recognizing it to be the bed of
the rushing stream that flowed in the court of the palace, fed by
unexplorable cisterns, and discharging its volume into an unsounded
abyss. As they advanced the wonders multiplied. Fluted pillars of
snowy alabaster, draped and marvellously traced by invisible hands;
towering shafts of white, red, amber and blue; hanging balconies of
gossamer lightness, trimmed with scarfs finer than the Indian shawl;
canopies bristling with numberless crystals of every tint and shape;
cataracts petrified in the act of precipitation; grottoes, fountains,
streamlets and cascades, with a myriad other exhibitions of magic art,
filled subterraneous spaces of unmeasured magnitude.

Progressing through irregular archways and winding passages, Sheddad
and Almena were lost in the labyrinth. Remembering, however, that the
crystal basin ran along the grand court above, Sheddad followed its
length and discovered a way to an ascent which took them to a broad
stairway. This was the entrance from below to a colonnade of
astonishing height and dimensions, covering the entire width of the
court, and having at both extremes grand flights of steps, leading up
to the wing of the palace crowned by the blazing dome.

If the son of Ad and his consort marveled at what they had seen
hitherto, they felt stupefied as ascending they stood before a golden
arch wrought in imitation of the rainbow, revealing the all-outshining
throne-hall, rising high above the lofty throne. Four tigers erect on
their haunches held up with their forepaws the seat of majesty, a
gorgeous divan bedecked with priceless jewels, under a lofty canopy
shaded by tapestries of matchless fabric and embroidery. To the right,
suspended from the roof of the canopy, hung the sceptre, a mace
incrusted with brilliants; to the left the crown, of dazzling
splendor; above the throne sun, moon, and stars were scattered within
the concave of the dome, while the twelve adjoining halls similarly
represented the signs of the zodiac, thus completing a startling
illusion of the heavens.

As though driven by an irresistible force, Sheddad, with the firm step
of a king, advanced to take possession of his throne, Almena watching
him with a throbbing heart. Nine steps had to be ascended before the
seat could be reached. The aspirant to godship thought he felt the
deadly breath of the tigers, whose distended claws and furious eyes
threatened destruction, but he nerved himself and ascended the royal
seat. Simultaneously with his touch upon the throne the crown
descended on his head, the sceptre flew into his hand, while a mantle
of radiance clothed his frame. Sheddad felt that he was a god, for his
coronation was confirmed by the immediate action of sun, moon and
stars, which began to move in their respective orbits, shedding mellow
light, and filling the spaces with sweet strains.

From his exalted seat Sheddad had for the first time an extended view
of his dominion, and he realized that what he had seen thus far was
but the heart of the whole, which seemed unbounded in extent and
unapproachable in magnificence. It was manifest that palace and court
formed the focus of a great city, spreading in many directions in
avenues shaded by trees and cooled by delicious springs, placid lakes,
playing fountains, and bubbling streamlets. Why should he lose a
moment to reveal himself to his tribe as their god and lead them
hither triumphant in confirmation of his godship? Who on earth was
mightier than he?

He rose. The sceptre slipped from his hand, the crown from his head,
the mantle from his shoulders. Everything stood still. The song died.
A dimness spread around him. The eyes of the tigers glared viciously.
He stood by the side of his wife. They joined hands, hurried down and
out into the open air to find that it was twilight and sultry. Surely
the garden was less green, the flowers less fresh, the air less balmy,
and the water less transparent than before. The song of the birds had
changed into a melancholy chirrup, and their eyes glowed with
threatening fierceness. From the water of the basin the fish pierced
the royal pair with their fiery eyes, and the breeze moved lamenting
through the corridors and trees. With a woman's instinct of impending
danger, Almena led the way out of the court; but the garden was
plunged in a mist, which made impossible a quick exit from the sylvan
entanglements. While trying to strike the main avenue, they fell in
with their dromedaries browsing contentedly in the thick of the most
exquisite shrubbery, with neither saddle nor rope available for use.
The brutes looked unaccountably shaggy; they turned to run at the
approach of their master, and did not stop until they had passed the
gateway of which Sheddad was in quest. Here the saddles were found,
shabby and mouldy, were placed where they belonged, the camels having
submitted to the goad, and the homeward journey began.

A deep sigh escaped Almena's breast as the distance widened between
them and the enchanted city, and when she found words she began
solemnly: "Sheddad, what is it we have seen and passed through? Cold
runs my blood when I think of the place; and dost thou mean to
re-enter it as our permanent home?"

"Thou art a woman, or thou wouldst know that what Sheddad conjured out
of naught, Sheddad will as master rule and own. Are not those spirits
subject to my will?" was the imperious answer.

"Thou wilt bear patiently with thy Almena, my lord; but are not the
looming cities and splendid gardens often seen in the haze of the
desert the dread of the lured Arab, who, mistaking them for fertile
oases, rushes to destruction? Verily, the wiles of Eblis are
numberless, and thy great palace is destitute of the sacred place to
prove it a work of the friendly Jinn. Thy father's end be thy warning,
O, light of mine eyes!" cried the woman appealingly.

"Art thou the wife of Sheddad, or of Sheddid? Let woman be timid, but
no man be craven. The signet on my finger scorns infernal traps. Thou
hast seen me on the awful throne destined to be the worship of
nations, and thou art to share in the divine sovereignty of thy
Sheddad.--But, O, Almena, why is thy voice so unlike the one I have
ever heard since the days of our youthful love? It sounds as though
thou art speaking to me from the hollow of a cave," spoke the son of
Ad uneasily.

"Thou hast taken this question from my lips, my lord; for thy speech
is so unfamiliar to my ear that, were I not near thee, I should
mistake it for an echo heard in the mountains of Yemen," confessed the
daughter of the desert.

There was no time for another remark. The air swarmed with thousands
of lurid Cupids, each one holding a tiny harp under his left arm.
Flocking together, they interlocked in such a fashion as to form a
stupendous arch, perfect in shape and burning like a crescent cut from
the effulgent sun. On the top of the curve alighted one larger than
his compeers, his outstretched arms pointing a glittering tiara in the
direction of Sheddad, whose advance was greeted with voluptuous
strains:

    "Hail, our chief, thy sceptre sway!
    Rule Irem, Sheddad, we obey!
    Thy seal bade spirits be thy thralls,
    Hail, god of Irem's magic halls!"

With the dying of the choral apostrophe, the treacherous vision
conjured by Eblis to dispel Almena's intuitive fear of something
dreadful to come faded away. The sure-footed dromedaries picked their
way among the bleak rocks and the sand ridges, with not a glimmer to
break the darkness nor a syllable to spur them on. Sheddad and Almena
continued silent under the overpowering spell of the sight, which
soared before their mental vision long after it had vanished to the
eye.

Daybreak found them near a solitary cliff known for the brackish
water, oozing from one of its cracks, and the scanty browsing nearby
fit for camels. Turning to his fresh water supply to appease his
thirst, Sheddad found the water-skin not only empty, but as dry as an
old hide, while the figs he held in reserve were mouldy and hard as
stone. Almena had the same experience. Unaccountable as appeared this
discovery, it was less of a surprise than the cadaverous aspect of
husband and wife, as they looked into each other's faces in full
daylight. "Thou dost not look like thyself, my lord; there is neither
blood in thy veins nor a beam of life in thine eye," cried the
startled mate of the aspiring god.

"And thou hast described thy own looks, O, Almena.--It is but the
withering of our mortal substance before our beings are impregnated
with immortal virtue," assumed Sheddad with an air of supreme
indifference, in which, however, his heart failed to share. Almena's
ghastly countenance, once the seat of radiant beauty, struck a chord
of unexpressed pain in the heart of her besotted consort.

The consternation of the tribe of Ad, on learning that a dead pair
mounted on two bulky _delools_[5] was on the point of entering their
encampment, may be imagined. The news was brought by some Arabs, who,
perceiving the approach of the strangers, made a sally, but hurried
back with the horrifying alarm, "The dead are coming!" Whoever could
run took to his heels, leaving the infirm old and the helpless young
to face the ghosts, who entered the settlement and took possession of
the largest tent, the one just vacated by Sheddid, who was among the
first to deny himself the enjoyment of the uninvited visitors.

    [5] A _delool_ is a dromedary trained and used as a saddle
    animal, and not as a burden carrier.

"If we have undergone a change, so has this place and all things
hereabout in but a few days; our young camels have grown large and
fat,--and who is this sleeping child?" asked Sheddad, pointing to a
half-naked maiden stretched on a mat upon the ground.--"Can this be
our Chaviva?"

"Our daughter!" exclaimed the mother hysterically, recognizing in the
girl of seven the child of two years. "Either we see wrong or things
are wrong," added the woman, greatly troubled.

"Neither this nor that; we are not the same, our sight is not the
same, but the world around us is the same, only that we see it
magnified, as higher beings must see; else how could the powers above
take cognizance of what is going on below?" argued Sheddad with
self-approving plausibility.

While Almena waited for her child to waken, Sheddad proceeded to
investigate the neighborhood with the view of gathering an audience to
whom to reveal himself. In vain did the hapless old men and women
hide themselves from the searching eye of the cadaverous chief; he
ferreted them out and warned them to beware of his wrath. "Inform the
tribe, and let Sheddid know, that Sheddad and Almena have dwelt in the
land of the spirits as god and goddess, and that I am come to take you
into an Eden of endless felicities, if you only say, 'Lead on,
Sheddad.'"

"Hast thou not dwelt with the dead all that time?" asked a trembling
crone.

"No, daughter of the noble tribe; during the five days we have been
away----"

"Five years!" interrupted a chorus of voices. "For five years have
Sheddad and Almena been missed and mourned as lost," supplemented the
aged female to the unspeakable consternation of his godship. He had
spent years, instead of hours, in the magic palace, and everything
contributed to confirm the astounding fact. Yet, however amazed,
Sheddad's faith in his superhumanity was so deeply rooted that the new
revelation occurred to him as but another evidence of his supernatural
destiny. To continue for five years without regular food and sleep
was to him a most striking proof of his transmutation, while the many
years that passed like so many hours attested the blessedness of the
seat he had created.

The one man of the tribe, who was most concerned and least delighted
with Sheddad's return from what he believed to be the real beyond, was
his own brother Sheddid, who wished himself a thousand miles away from
the spot; not that he was jealous of the rights attaching to his
brother's primogeniture, but because he shuddered at the thought of
meeting him, to say nothing of his aversion to the conjurer's
chimerical projects. However, having nerved himself to the emergency,
Sheddid faced his brother with the question whether he was determined
to lead his people into a realm whence they would return like him,
looking more dead than alive.--"An evil influence sways thy heart, O,
my brother. The children of Ad are happy, why tempt them into a snare
spread by Eblis?"

Sheddad replied with a glowing outline of the Eden in store for them
who would follow him. "That ye may all be convinced of the truth my
words contain, this coming eve a mist shall rise from the bosom of
Hadramaut, and with it shall ascend the image of the palace and city
embedded in gardens like unto Paradise. Remain in the waste ye who
love it; but ye who prefer the marble habitation, the cool walk, the
cooler spring, the crystal bath, the delicious fruit, the mellow
sunshine, the sights of wonder, and the rule of the world, to the dark
tent, the scanty meal and the arid region,--are welcome to share them
with Sheddad," cried he with godlike benignity.

This offer was received with a wild shout by the fiery children of the
desert, and the promised mirage was expected with intense interest.
Retiring to his tent, the mighty wizard summoned the chief of the Jinn
and charged him with the task of conjuring up the picture of the
Palace of Irem. Sunset was the signal for every eye to turn toward the
desert. With nightfall came a pellucid silveriness, which transformed
the wilderness into an atmospheric canvas whereon rose, looming in
perfect outline and majestic proportions, the city, palace and
gardens of Irem. Wild joy yielded to a sober sense of awe before him
who thus proved his claim to worshipful reverence.--"Lead us, divine
Sheddad," was the cry, followed by the taking down of tents and the
loading of camels, the whole tribe being seized by the one passion, to
possess and inhabit the grandest and happiest of cities. Sheddid was
obliged to choose between remaining behind or going with the tribe,
and he threw in his lot with the multitude, his evil forebodings
notwithstanding.

The march was opened with dance and song, Sheddad and Almena leading
the motley caravan; but soon voices other than human began to disturb
the pregnant silence of the dismal waste. Sheddad's name was heard
articulated to the accompaniment of heart-chilling laughter. As if
goaded by demons to madness, the camels grew vicious, throwing women
and children from their backs and trampling them to death, so that
everybody hoped for day to deliver them from terror. But there was no
break in the night, although it seemed as long as three nights in one;
and when light finally broke on the caravan it came so suddenly that
it almost blinded the confused Arabs. And with it came a noise from On
High, a noise like that of a myriad roaring lions, growing, swelling
and reverberating till heaven appeared in uproar,--earth trembling,
the desert glowing like a furnace, the sands rising and whirling like
a cyclone of ignited gases, and exploding in vitriolic sheets of fire.
Man and brute tried to bury their heads in the burning sands. The
catastrophe was too terrible for flesh to survive. In his agony
Sheddad felt the signet slip from his finger. Struck deaf and dumb,
the son of Ad perished with his entire following, the cyclonic fire
consuming them flesh and bone. Only those whom weakness or the love of
little ones detained behind remained to build up again the almost
annihilated tribe of Ad.

Such was the punishment of Sheddad for his aspiration to godship. His
name lives in Arabia's legendary lore. Down to this day Allah
preserves the city and palace as a monument of divine retribution, and
numerous are the tales of straying pilgrims or lost Bedouins, who
have been favored with a glimpse of it. Among these is Kalabah who,
having lost himself in the desert while in search of a camel, suddenly
found himself before the gate of a dazzling city. He entered it, but
was so overawed by the dead stillness therein that he fled its
precincts in horror, taking with him an invaluable stone as a memento.
This he showed to the Caliph Madwigah in confirmation of his
adventure,--as is duly recorded.




THE MYSTERY OF THE DAMAVANT.


As a somewhat distant offshoot of the Elburz the Damavant is a
solitary pile, of imposing proportions, generally admitted to be
Persia's most graceful mountain. Seen from a vantage point in Tehran,
cloud-crowned Damavant appears to be the real shoulder of sky-bearing
Atlas, losing its head in ether and its foot in a forest of the
semi-tropical varieties, dense to the degree of inaccessibility. The
wild beast is here at home; the tiger, bear, wolf, panther and wild
boar, finding in these jungles an abundance of food, a safe retreat,
and a cool spring to satisfy thirst. While the gentler slopes are
covered by extensive, fruit-bearing orchards, there are crests and
hollows in the Elburz system which the eagle's eye alone has seen,
and there are peaks which, but for the sinuous furrows cut by the wild
torrents after heavy showers, no human foot could ever ascend. Spirits
are believed to haunt the caves and impenetrable thickets of those
mountains, a belief sustained by mocking echoes and multiple
reverberations started by the least noise; and the simple Iranian folk
look up to him with awe, who dares sojourn above the settled line of
demarcation dividing the earthly from the unearthly. The history of
religion, poetry and superstition is inextricably intertwined with the
weird mystery which hangs over the unapproachable heights and deeps of
mountains.

  [Illustration: "Determined to penetrate into the seemingly
    impenetrable wonderland of the Damavant."
      Page 92.]

It was through a bewildering gorge, which heavy rain transforms into
the bed of a wild torrent, that, in the year 410 of the Hegira, two
men of note, preceded by four experienced mountain-climbers, were
toiling uphill determined to penetrate into the seemingly impenetrable
wonderland of the Damavant's south-easterly acclivity. The attempt
implied hard work and great risk, and the wonder of it was that one
of those two men betrayed the unmistakable signs which indicate high
age. Clothed in the habit of a dervish, the white-headed climber
assisted his infirmity by a strong staff, but now and then had to be
helped over an impediment by the brawny arms of the vigilant
attendants. His companion, who was a much younger and stronger man of
dignified bearing, wore the garb of nobility and the air of command,
leaving no doubt as to his being one in power and authority. At every
step he took in advance his eye reverted to the decrepit figure back
of him. "The return will be easier," said he to the older man with a
sympathetic smile.

"Thou hast spoken truth; the return is the easiest part; the coming
hither, and the _being_, that is the trouble," answered the other, his
luminous face marked by the deep furrows of age and sorrow.

"With Mahmud of Ghaznin out of thy mind, Firdusi, would that still be
thy mood?" inquired the younger man in a soft voice.

"Mahmud's court is the sea of evil which swallowed my island of
happiness. Whom did I murder that I should be a footsore fugitive
like the blood-stained son of Adam?" cried the old man in a faltering
tone, having stopped to take breath.

"Thy ethereal spirit has murdered grossness, giving this world a
foretaste of Eden. Thy _Shah-Namah_ is the song of the skies, and
Eblis, who revels in discord and confusion, took vengeance on thee by
poisoning Mahmud's mind, O, Firdusi.--Thy own version shows not that
thy enemy is Mahmud, but his envious treasurer. It shall end well,
however. Nasir Lek's message will not leave Mahmud unmoved," said the
younger man, who was the Governor of Kohistan, a friend of the Sultan
of Ghaznin, and a boundless admirer of Persia's famous poet, Firdusi.

"May Allah bless thy kindness; yea, it shall end well; it is well that
things here come to an end,--or with poverty to sting, with oppression
to harass, and the dread of the executioner's axe to torture one, life
were a hell without redemption. Ah, I have emptied the cup of
bitterness to its dregs! But it cannot now last long; my human frame's
time of final crumbling has been nearly reached. May Firdusi's misery
be Mahmud's pillow!" cried the poet, turning his liquid eyes
heavenward.

By this time the men had ascended to a height of over nine thousand
feet above the sea level, and Tehran spread far away, like a patch
covered with all kinds of mushrooms. The sun was near the end of his
course and the golden flood turned the vast reaches into a magic
picture of light and shade, under a dome suffused with rippled waves
of translucent purple, crimson, silver and gold. With their faces
turned toward the East, the Moslems knelt and lay prostrate in prayer.
This done, the escort was ordered to await their lord's return where
they stood, and the two men soon disappeared in a labyrinth of crags,
rocks, loose bowlders, and heaps of stone, with no vestige of
vegetation. Firdusi had the question at his tongue's end, how could a
sentient being live in so inhospitable a region, in a temperature so
freezing that it chilled him to his marrow? But he said nothing. The
cold grew with the dreariness of the surroundings, and now they
plunged into a sea of dense fog, still climbing higher and higher, the
younger assisting his older friend. At last Nasir brought forth a horn
to which he gave wind. The blast reverberated with appalling effect,
followed by a profound silence. There was no answer. Another blast
startled the echoes of the mountain a thousandfold, ringing like
muffled drums, and lo! there came a note in response,--a shrill note
like that of a whistle.

"We are welcome, and thou wilt be rewarded for thy toil, Firdusi,"
said Nasir.

"He is thy mystery of the Damavant," observed the poet skeptically.

"Thou wilt face a man who might pass for the spirit of this mountain;
as to his occult power, thou shalt thyself be judge," suggested Nasir.

"Is one permitted to ask him questions?" inquired Firdusi.

"Ask nothing until his revelations are spread before thee; thou wilt
have little to ask. The juggler's art has often amused me, but
Almazor's alembic has almost translated me from one state of being to
another.--There he is; say nothing; he knows my purpose, and will read
thy mind," said the lord of Kohistan nervously.

Firdusi, looking in vain for the outlines of a human form, almost fell
into the arms of a something that wore a cloak, was very long-bearded,
very tall, very attenuated and pale as the moon, the pallor being
enhanced by a whiteness of hair which rivaled new-fallen snow. The
only dark feature in the hermit's face was one glaring eye hemmed in
by a cavernous socket, the other orb being sightless and covered with
skin like the rest of the countenance.

Almazor could indeed pass as a prince of ghosts rather than a creature
held alive by the circulation of warm blood, and his speaking by
pantomime added to the awe inspired by his inscrutable nature. He
stood in the curve of a semi-circular enclosure before an aperture
that was not large enough for a man to enter without crouching low.

Without a salaam or any ceremony, Almazor turned and slipped like a
serpent into the gaping hole of the rock, the others following him.
It was brighter within than without, although there was nothing in
sight to account for the brightness. The nimbleness with which the
fleshless hermit ascended and descended steep and winding galleries,
bridges, and tunnels, leading now up now down into the core of the
mountain, was less surprising than the lightness with which the men
behind him kept up the pace, as though carried by a force beyond the
law of gravitation. Their impression grew that the top of Damavant
could not be very far above them when the speechless guide stopped in
a brightly illumined space of considerable size and height, irregular
as caves are, but beautified by a long vista, slanting upward not
unlike a funnel of polished silver, at the upper end of which shone,
in its fullest circumference, the broad disk of the full moon. A
stalagmite of pure crystal sparkled in the moonlight like a reflector,
affording seats for perhaps a score of people; at its foot stood the
bowl of an unusually large chibouque, its green stem hanging like a
snake over the back of the glittering divan, and a box of sandal-wood
completed the equipment of the magic laboratory.

The opening of the sandal-wood box brought to light a strange herb,
cut and dried like tobacco, but diffusing a sense-blunting odor; and
being put into the fire-bowl of the chibouque and ignited, the
mysterious herb filled the space with a golden smoke and a somnolent
atmosphere. Mechanically complying with a motion of the hermit's hand,
Firdusi seated himself next to the chibouque, turned his eyes in the
direction of the moon's shining disk and, before he knew it, had the
mouthpiece of the pipe between his lips. As the smoke followed the
smoker's breath, and rose in puffs and ringlets above his head, he
lost consciousness of his environment, and realized a sense of bodily
expansion, as though his frame was undergoing a transmutation from the
solid to the ethereal form. At the same time the lunar orb assumed
prodigious dimensions, swelling, spreading, and changing from a
mottled globe to a continent of glaring peaks and black abysses, its
enormous bulk seeming to draw nearer and nearer the beholder, who felt
that, by an unaccountable process, he was being translated from one
world to another. Utterly and willingly helpless, Firdusi allowed
himself to be tossed and twirled lightly, and his next sensation was
of alighting on massive ground brilliantly illumined.

In his most daring flights of imagination the poet had never dreamed
of the possibility of such a sight as the lunar world presented to his
eyes. The height he stood upon dwarfed the forest of pointed pinnacles
around, and afforded him an insight into numberless pits as black as
the surface was dazzling,--if this name be applicable to an endless
agglomeration of spires, turrets, crests, rocks, crags, precipices,
varied by bottomless abysses, the whole torn, broken, wrenched,
twisted by tremendous agencies into most fantastic shapes--a terrific
waste of awful confusion and eternal silence. The death of death ruled
here supreme. Glass of all shades and no shade; masses of all colors
and no color; fissures, clefts and chasms of all forms and no form,
with none of the elemental conditions which create and further life,
characterized the appalling desolation. How and wherefore did this
come to be? A sea of once molten ores, tossed about and blown upon by
interstellar forces, and chilled into iron rigidity while sweeping
through a freezing zone, hangs forever in radiant gloom, the celestial
mirror of the sun's unebbing light, when his face is turned away from
our globe, thought the poet; and his eye swept afar in search of
relief from the fierce light not less than from the abysmal deeps
buried in darkness.

With the sigh of an uneasy heart, Firdusi looked up to the source of
the unendurable effulgence. The blackness of the infinite space on
high was intensified by the enormity of the flaming sphere, convulsed
by fiery oceans in tempestuous agitation, upshooting, breaking and
bursting, like furious billows hurled one against another by battling
hurricanes.

While the beholder compared this aspect of the sun with his milder
face as seen from the earth, the stormy fire-ball began to sink
visibly. Night hurried from the opposite heaven to swallow his last
ray. He disappeared, as if devoured by a monster, leaving no trail to
mark his march through the black dome of the universe. Overawed by the
stupendous phenomenon, Firdusi closed his eyes in fervent prayer,
praising Allah the Most Merciful. A more pleasing sight was another
sphere which now rose in distinct outlines above the black horizon,
much larger than the moon as seen from below, and as much sweeter,
presenting a figured disk of beautiful shadings, zones and fields of
color approaching those most familiar to the human eye. How gracious
He who gave man that blessed world, said the poet to himself, and
feasted his eyes on its configurations, which grew more distinct as
the globe rose higher, mildly radiant and sublimely impressive.

There was no possibility of discerning distinctly one thing from
another, but Firdusi's poetic fancy endeavored to locate the blue
oceans, to recognize the green zones, and trace the mountain ranges
and the great deserts. And as the world wherein man is king and slave,
saint and sinner, angel and demon, happy and wretched, grew more and
more glorious in ascent, the suffering bard, feeling in his grief the
woes of the race, allowed his tears to flow before speech came to his
relief.

"The Universe is thy secret, Power Divine, but O, for that peace which
dwells with Thee alone, that sight which reveals the great mystery,
and the life which knows no beginning, no withering, and no end! Who
am I, and wherefore thrown on that shore of time, that isle of space,
to struggle with a myriad myriads of my like, toiling and sighing,
with death as the dark end of a dark nightmare? If man must perish
like the worm, then happy the worm who knows not his misery. Alas, in
shreds scattered are the golden webs of hope here. Who knows that my
dreams of Paradise are less illusory? That splendid world has much to
sweeten life made bitter by the serpent in the human breast. Why is
man so akin to the brute? Am I a spirit fallen, sent yonder to atone,
and by atonement to be redeemed? Or am I risen from things below the
worm to my present state, and progressing toward a higher,--ay,
perchance the highest life and form, like Him who traced my pathway
through the vale of sorrow and the shadow of death? Or are the worm
and I but infinitesimal incidents in endless time and space, called
forth by a cruel fate to wriggle in agony and sink into everlasting
night? Power Divine, forbid this black thought from blighting the last
flower of hope, lest chaos swallow what is bright and sane in this
little world of mine."

As though responsive to the mood of the bard, the terrestrial globe
began to undergo a phenomenal change. Lurid and livid hues overspread
its luminous shadings with frightful velocity, rushing in like an
ever-thickening pall, and giving the appearance of a red ball engulfed
in a cloud of cinders, with black space as the background. But the
moon, although obscured by the darkening of her superior luminary, did
not remain in total obscurity. The reason of which became manifest to
Firdusi the moment he sent his eyes elsewhere to account for the
shimmer. What he beheld was too much for him to contemplate without a
shudder of reverential awe, a consciousness of nothingness in face of
the sublime eternal; and yet it was but a glimpse of the starry
heavens. For every blinking star visible to the eye from sublunar
ground there shone now a score of constellations, clusters of wheeling
spheres, the nearest of which exceeded the rainbow in circumference,
transcending it in brilliancy. The interstellar darkness acted as a
frame to set off the glowing galaxies, so that the empyrean suggested
the idea of an ethereal tree, spreading its sun-bespangled crown
throughout immensity.

And the vast grew vaster, and the depths deeper, and the wonders
multiplied, as host after host emerged from the bosom of infinity,
wheeling and circling in celestial grandeur, stirring boundless ether
with soul-enravishing strains. Firdusi's great heart thawed in
felicity; from his eyes rolled the tear of rapture, not unmixed with a
blunted sense of pain, springing from a lingering apprehension that it
was all but a vain vision. To his ear the music of the spheres spelt
man's inscrutable destiny, his real woes, his elusive hopes, his
unrealized dreams, and his dark end. But there was a healing solace,
an intuitive appeasement in the heavenly exhibition, so that the
poet, realizing the balm of faith, muttered resignedly:

"Power Divine, infinite as are Thy eternal glories, even I am
interwoven in Thy impenetrable design, whatever Thy purpose. In Thy
perfection Thou hast created no being to be forever imperfect, or to
utterly perish after a ray of Thy intelligence has once irradiated his
mind."

Firdusi's lips trembled as he lisped this conviction. His hand moved
instinctively toward his eyes, which were veiled by a dimness that
made everything swim vaguely before his vision. The sense of coming
down headlong from another world made his weak frame writhe in
convulsions of horror. When he opened his eyes he found himself in the
arms of his friend, Nasir.

Great as was the poet's creative faculty, it required some time for
him to recall his original situation, especially since the cave
presented nothing of its previous features. There was neither a bright
vista nor a moon to look at, but a dingy hole out of which they had to
grope their way, with no hermit to lead them. When they issued from
the mountain's mystery it was broad daylight; they had stayed therein
the whole night. Soon the attendants answered the call of Nasir's
horn, and the descent was made in perfect silence. They arrived before
the gates of the palace simultaneously with a courier, who, springing
from his saddle, respectfully delivered a package to the ruler of
Kohistan. "It is Mahmud's answer to my appeal in thy behalf, Firdusi,"
observed Nasir with a beaming countenance, "and I know not the Sultan
of Ghaznin if the devil triumphed this time."

They were no sooner within the Governor's residence than Nasir broke
the seal of the message to learn its purport, and he read as follows:

"In the name of the only true, most merciful God! From Mahmud of
Ghaznin to his friend Nasir Lek of Kohistan, in behalf of Abul Casim
Mansur Firdusi. Peace and friendly greetings. God alone is great. May
truth and mercy prevail.

"As thy soul hath spoken, so hath my heart answered, moved by the
pleadings of thy fairness. Yea, there is no sweeter singer than
Firdusi, and the blame of his wrong is mine to the extent of having
lent mine ear to the slander of his enemies, whose mischievous head,
Hassan Meimendi, has fallen under the blow of the executioner's axe.
The all-knowing Allah never errs, but how can a ruler of nations
escape error when misled by them whom he believes to be just, wise and
true? Once enlightened, Mahmud will neither withhold the prize nor the
honor due to him who glorified Iran's immortal heroes, inspiring the
sons to emulate their sires. However great, the dead were dead
forever, but for the bard whose magic wand reclaims them from the dust
to robe them in unfading splendor, and Persia's national song was
forced to wait the coming of Firdusi.

"As God is merciful, the singer of the _Shah-Namah_ shall hereafter
have no other grievance than the remembrance of a past wrong. A load
of gold larger than the one promised shall be delivered at his
bidding; and if sympathetic regrets expressed by his whilom friend and
sovereign will give him solace, Mahmud of Ghaznin herewith conveys
his sorrow for his unworthy treatment of Abul Casim Mansur Firdusi,
who is welcome at my court, welcome as far as my rule extends."

Bent, sad and silent, did Firdusi listen to the message of the monarch
who had blasted his happiness, the tear alone betraying his
inexpressible heartache. The generous host understood the cause of his
friend's grief. The author of Iran's great epopee and of _Yusuf_ and
_Zuleikha_ had little to expect of this life, fear, want and
homelessness having been his share at an age when the laurel crown
ought to have graced his head in a home of ease and plenty. He had
survived his only son, and was separated from his only daughter. And
that vision of stars soaring, as it did, before his fiery imagination,
served but to intensify his melancholy. On earth his career was
drawing to its close, what was there to hope for beyond the grave?

Nasir took alarm at the change he perceived in the face and manner of
his friend, whose look was suggestive of approaching dissolution.
"Thou art in need of refreshment, after the exhausting ascent," said
the host sympathetically.

"Let me, I pray thee, abstain from taking food until the craving
demands it, lest it choke me, being overfull," replied the poet with
ill-suppressed emotion.

Having appeased his own hunger by a meal served by slaves, Nasir
surprised his friend by asking him in a tone less reproachful than
anxious, "So, have the good tidings not broken thy gloom, O, Firdusi,
nor the mystery of the Damavant added to thy spiritual wealth, thy
ethereal dreams?"

"Thou art good, and I ought to be happy in my magnanimous friend, but
happiness ever frowned at my courting, and fled never to return.
Friend, I stand on the brink of my grave, with precious years wasted
in undeserved disgrace, unmitigated wretchedness.--Ah, and that vision
revealed to me in the recesses of the Damavant! If thou knowest its
nature thou canst draw thy conclusions," returned Firdusi deeply
moved, adding: "Thy hermit is more than thou dreamest of him."

"That is what I looked for thee to say; but Almazor is a secret
bequest of my father, and that horn of mine is the only signal he will
respond to; otherwise he is not to be found, and Tehran knows no more
of him than thou didst before I led thee thither. He is the mystery of
the Damavant, more ghost than man, living no one knows how, a spirit
among spirits, unaffected by hunger, thirst or cold," explained Nasir
with impressive earnestness.

"A great secret and a precious heirloom all in one," mused Firdusi.

"Thou hast said it; my father's father blew the horn I sounded
yester-night, and saw peradventure the things thou and I have seen,"
continued Nasir.

"Those are sights to unhinge reason," asserted the poet.

"What thou hast seen is thy secret, O, Firdusi, and thou hast been
vouchsafed no more than thy spirit can assimilate. Strange were the
words thou hast spoken in the trance caused by the smoke of the
mysterious herb, as it passed through thy system. That herb crops up
where no earthly plant can exist, in a spring which is half liquid and
half vapor, warm when everything around is frozen, and cold when the
sun's heat beats against it like the deadly simoom. Invisible in
daylight, the herb betrays itself at rare intervals in the dead of the
darkest night by its phosphorescent nature. From my father I have it
that, infused into the human frame in any manner, the mind will see
whatever it is capable of grasping. Under its influence I had a
glimpse of paradise, a clime and a region impossible to describe,"
imparted the host confidingly.

A transient smile flitted over the poet's countenance as his eyes met
those of his communicative friend, and then rang a voice deep,
sonorous, fluent and suave, conjuring before the entranced hearer
sights appalling to think of, illuminated horrors rolling in ether, a
world of dismal deserts, dead mountains and black abysses: petrified
chaos grinning in the face of a burning and seething sun. But when,
passing from the lunar desolations to the empyrean hosts, the master
of epic melody gave full play to his inspired genius, bidding the
stars to march forth as he had seen them before the spirit's eye,
Nasir fell into an ecstasy of delight, sinking on his knees, weeping,
and kissing the hands of the white-headed singer he so loved and
revered, and crying: "And all this fails to make thee happy, divine
Firdusi!"

In this enthusiastic exclamation of his devoted admirer the poet heard
a reproach. Is not faith, blind faith, preferable to endowments which
engender doubt? He had had his share of fame and favor, but proved too
frail to accept trials with the resignation enjoined by Islam. Revolt
against Allah's unsearchable decree is unworthy of the true believer.
Zarathustra lay prostrate in adoration before the sun, because to his
mind the Universe reveals nothing grander as a symbol of divine
Omnipotence; how much deeper ought he to be impressed who has
witnessed the sublime progress of a billion suns in the midst of their
countless planets and satellites?

"Thy words are not meant as a reprimand, yet am I startled at what
they imply," spoke Firdusi in a deliberate tone. "Even at my age
theories may be revised, and new conclusions reached. Though
fire-worshippers are the heroes of my _Shah-Namah_, my faith is that
of the Prophet. But alas! how banish doubt which steals into one's
head like the demon of insanity? If we must have a theory let us build
on the postulate that life and death point to harmonizing relations.
The self-evident relation of the tiniest blade of grass to the great
sun is not clearer than that of the rain-drop to the cloud and the
ocean, and both prove that of the human soul to the universal Spirit.
If the outer world reveals to us little more than the form of things,
a glimpse into their inner nature is granted us in our inner world of
thought and inspiration. When land and sea, mountain and valley, field
and desert, lake and river, tree and blossom, fish, brute, bird and
insect,--when the elements of earth and the stars of heaven, are
recognized as the visible manifestations of an impenetrable design,
with man as the crowning work in this nether creation, and God as the
All-in-All, the All-above-All throughout the Universe, then does the
soul pass from her inner world into the supernatural domain,
inspiration passes into revelation, and the mind's peace and the
heart's felicity insure a foretaste of heaven; the dissonance of doubt
succumbs to the harmony of faith, and the rain-drop, long lost in the
dark cracks and crevices of the rugged rock, bounds forth in a crystal
spring, rushes into the rivulet, the river, eager to mix with the
ocean's vast."

Whether Nasir understood his friend's metaphysics or not, he was the
last to question a man's ideas, whose superior wisdom he never
doubted. Moslem friendship is kindred to Bedouin hospitality, and
Nasir, who had received the poet with all the marks of distinction,
made arrangements to signalize his departure in royal form. After a
feast given in his honor to the notables of the province, the famous
bard, mounted on a fine dromedary, followed by another one loaded with
valuable presents, and escorted by a magnificent cavalcade, issued
hopefully from Tehran's gate, accompanied by his loyal friend.

"If Allah's mercy grants me the joys of paradise, I will pray that
Nasir Lek share them with me, unless thy meed be above mine, who am
less generous than thou," were Firdusi's last words of gratitude,
addressed to his magnanimous host.

On reaching Tus, the place of his birth, Firdusi found that the
Sultan's promised gold had not arrived, and he was greatly troubled,
lest Mahmud's apologies were intended as a snare spread for his
destruction. His apprehension was not allayed by hearing incidentally
a child in the street lisp a verse of the pungent satire in which he
taunts Mahmud as the base-born son of slaves. The trend of the lines
was, that had that potentate's progenitors been of noble blood,
instead of cheating him of the prize he had promised for the
_Shah-Namah_, he would have set a crown of gold on his aged head.

Heart-wringing self-compassion moved the decrepit man to tears. His
grievance is the plaint of Iran, breathed by innocents into the ears
of sympathetic mothers. Once more he lived through the fearful moments
of his life; the hours of that night when daybreak was to see him
trampled under the feet of Mahmud's elephants, because he had resented
the Sultan's meanness in sending him sixty thousand pieces of silver
instead of gold, _dirhems_ in lieu of _dinars_, as agreed; the moment
when, fleeing from the wrath of the tyrant, he sought a refuge at
Mazenderan, where Kabous, the prince of Jorjan, durst not harbor him
for fear of the implacable persecutor; and that most painful of hours
when El Kader Billah, the Caliph of Baghdad, at first delighted with
the genius of the fugitive, asked him to depart when Mahmud of Ghaznin
demanded his extradition. Whelmed with grief, the broken man returned
to his daughter's home to die in her arms, resigned to the inscrutable
decree of destiny.

Just as Firdusi's body was carried out through one gate of Tus, the
camels which bore the Sultan's gold entered the city through another.
His daughter refused to accept it, but an aged relative remembered his
cherished wish to see his native place improved by public works,
especially a healthy and plentiful supply of water. To comply with the
poet's generous wish, the treasure was taken and invested for the
benefit of his lamenting townsmen, whose descendants have during the
successive centuries continued to celebrate the passing of Iran's
immortal singer.




THE GODS IN EXILE.


The year 1492 was a dark one for the sons of Shem. The fall of Granada
and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain are events more generally
commemorated than the equally dramatic episode which wound up with the
tragic death of Bajazid, the dashing caliph of Damascus, surnamed
Yildirim--"the thunderbolt." At no time of the year is the Moslem
world so deeply stirred as during the month Shawall, the fifteenth day
of which marks the official opening of the great yearly pilgrimage to
Mecca. The Haj is the name of the leading caravan which carries the
Sultan's gift for Mohammed's shrine, that holds the black stone given
by an angel to Abraham. No animal in creation has so many devout eyes
concentrated on its unbeautiful outlines as the dromedary which
conveys, under a canopy of green silk, the gorgeously embroidered
covering for the walls of the Kabah. This _Kiswa_, as it is called, is
made of black brocade, and its magnificent golden border spells divine
utterance culled from the gems of the Koran. Exceeding it in
costliness is a smaller curtain sent along for the Kabah's doors which
swing in a frame of silver and gold.

Even in our days that train starts from Damascus with great ceremony,
is accompanied by the municipal dignitaries led by the Pasha, and
escorted by a regiment in military pomp. No Moslem eye will miss the
opportunity of witnessing the _muhmil_, or silken canopy, as it swings
on the camel's back, shielding the sacred vesture of the most sacred
of Islam's fanes, so that along the line of the procession the immense
concourse of the faithful throng every available spot, from the
terraced roof down to the gutters of the ill-paved, sinuous lanes.

Such is the religious signal for hundreds of thousands to start for
the centre of Moslem devotion from every quarter and corner as far as
the crescent is revered, to fulfil the duty of adoring the object of
the Prophet's worship. For he who has kissed that heavenly stone is
not alone cleansed of all his sins, but is thereafter distinguished by
the surname of Hajj.

The departure of the Haj in the year of the discovery of the New World
was one of unprecedented commotion. It was known that a great army was
being concentrated and hurriedly drilled, and that Bajazid was on the
point of taking the field himself, having gained signal triumphs in
his repeated wars with Christian powers. That he appeared in his great
mosque on the day of the Haj, and, surrounded by his bodyguard,
followed the muhmil out of the city's confines, was interpreted as an
ominous sign of impending danger. The Caliph's countenance was
scrutinized with great anxiety by those who caught sight of it, and
somber deductions passed from lip to lip. As if to confirm the popular
apprehensions, as Bajazid re-entered the city, a yelling saint,
looking more like a satyr than a human being, emerged nobody knew
whence, and, planting himself in the way of the white steed which
carried the Commander of the faithful, cried: "Bajazid, Bajazid, the
stars are against thee. Woe! Woe! Damascus! I see thee and thy sister
cities swim in blood, thy treasures plundered, thy beauty rifled, thy
daughters outraged, with none to avenge thee! Woe! Woe! Woe!" A
terrible frown darkened the brows of the hitherto invincible Caliph,
but nobody dared lay a hand on the prophet of evil, who was allowed to
lose himself in the next grove unmolested. The saint is only an
instrument in the hand of Allah, and before the people had
sufficiently recovered from their consternation to exchange a word
about the fateful prophecy, a courier came tearing along the straight
way of the city; another one was close behind, and another, their
horses panting for breath. These events were followed by a sleepless
night and feverish activity in the palace. Couriers were speeding to
and fro; regiments were moving; batteries were mounted, and the
graying dawn saw the Sultan at the head of a division marching out of
his citadel never to return.

From the hand of fate Bajazid was to drink the dregs of the bitter
cup. Like stubble before the fire, everything withered before the
all-engulfing devastation of Timur's unconquerable host. Having swept
nations and races before him, that celebrated Tartar conqueror made
short work of Bajazid's mighty army. In the province of Angora host
encountered host, the Caliph sustained a crushing defeat, his army was
shattered, and the dreaded "thunderbolt" was himself among the
prisoners in the hands of a merciless foe. With other cities,
beautiful Damascus experienced the wrath of the Tartar's beastly
nature. An indiscriminate slaughter of the population was followed by
pillage, and whatever could not be plundered and taken off was
delivered to the flames. The Caliph's fate was sad in the extreme.
Dragged along by the conqueror as a trophy in an iron palanquin, which
looked more like a cage than aught else, death, more gracious than the
savage Tartar, finally delivered Bajazid from a life of humiliation
and torture.

The wizard who had foretold the downfall of the Caliph and the ruin
of populous cities was never hereafter seen within the broad circuit
of Damascus, a region exceeding in the exuberance of its semi-tropic
verdure and panoramic landscape the beauty of Granada's famous valley
in its palmy days of Moorish rule. The fatalistic principle of Islam
precludes spying into the inscrutable decrees of Allah, whose will is
fate from which there is neither appeal nor escape. Why then waste a
moment in identifying an oracle whose prophecies pass through him as
water passes through a pipe? It is impious to search into the
unsearchable.

There were two young men on the scene, however, whose antecedents
account for that mad impetuosity with which they stormed onward in
pursuit of the oracular saint as soon as it was possible for them to
elude the eyes of the crowd. One was Damon Mianolis, a young Greek,
who had inherited from his father an avidity for the occult science of
astrology; the other was Selim Ebn Asa, a youthful Moslem, who had
enabled Damon to witness in disguise the departure of the Haj.
Damon's father was a physician, but had a secret laboratory, and had
spent a fortune in attempts at fathoming the mysteries of alchemy and
astrology. Damon had been early initiated into those mystic arcana,
had learned to cast the horologue, but was wofully disappointed in the
matter of extracting gold from other substances, and gave up the hope
of ever discovering the elixir of life. The physician's death had put
his son in possession of an extensive practice among his
fellow-Christians, and Selim's friendship was due to the Moslem's
ambition to acquire a knowledge of French, which Damon spoke fluently.

The intimate relation of the two young men led to free discussions of
the merits of their respective creeds, with the result that each one
believed a little more in his friend's and a little less in his own
scheme of salvation. The heavenly city built of gold and precious
stones, with twelve gates and glittering streets, through which flows
the river of life, bordered on its banks by the tree of life, which
bears twelve sorts of fruits and leaves of healing virtue, was pointed
to by Damon as the pattern of Mohammed's paradise of which Selim made
much in his effort to convert his friend. Selim meant to astonish
Damon by referring to those pavilions of pearls in which the houris
dwell retired, each pearl sixty miles in dimension; but was met by the
even more astonishing promise of St. John that "the days shall come
when there shall be vines which shall have each ten thousand branches,
and every one of these branches shall have ten thousand lesser
branches, and every one of these branches shall have ten thousand
twigs, and every one of the twigs shall have ten thousand clusters of
grapes, and every one of these clusters shall bear ten thousand
grapes, and every one of these grapes being pressed shall yield two
hundred and seventy-five gallons of wine, and when a man shall take
hold of one of those sacred branches, another one shall cry out 'I am
the better branch; take me and bless the Lord.'"[6]

    [6] _Cf._ Irenæus, Book V., Chap. 33.

This left the youthful Moslem little to boast of in the concern of
paradisial blessedness, and he was totally overwhelmed by a vivid
picture of Dante's elaboration of hell. What impressed Selim, however,
most profoundly was Damon's familiarity with the heavenly
configurations, and his pretended ability to read future events. The
fact is that the late Mianolis had shortly before his death predicted
Bajazid's overthrow and captivity, and Selim had received a hint of
the prediction. No sooner, therefore, had the saint's lamentation
fallen on their ears than the young men exchanged a significant look,
and the next instant both were on the track of the retreating
soothsayer. In but a very few minutes Selim realized the impossibility
of his overtaking the fleeing man, whose feet scarcely touched the
turf; but not so Damon, who taxed his energies to their uttermost to
keep the winged fugitive in sight. Not a living soul crossed them as
they hurried onward, the saint leading through a maze of entangling
thickets on pathways of his own,--the other following almost out of
breath, determined not to give up the chase.

In this way miles had been traversed before Damon noticed that they
were at the foot of Anti-Lebanon, and that Selim was not behind him.
The ascent had to be made, or the game would have been lost in a
moment. From an elevation of several hundred feet Damon's eye was
fascinated by the superb view of Damascus, set in a garland of groves,
bushes and gardens, distance enhancing the charm of the exquisite
panorama. Along the banks of Abana, in the heart of a sea of verdure,
rose a grand vision of terraced roofs, surmounted here and there by
swelling domes, towering minarets, tipped with gilded crescents,
glittering like burnished scythes from the thick foliage of blooming
parks. An area of thirty miles in circuit spread like a dream, with a
variance of grouping and shading, and a charm of blended tints such as
are rarely vouchsafed to the eye even in regions of renowned
picturesqueness.

Damon had never before seen Damascus in such a wreath of glory; but
the few seconds the sight exacted of his attention frustrated his
efforts to locate the wizard's retreat, who had disappeared as though
dissolved in air. At the same time a feeling of exhaustion rendered a
further ascent impossible, coupled with a somnolence which stole and
gained upon the youth, until, succumbing to the spell, he lay
stretched on the grass under a tree, lost in oblivion. Re-appearing on
the scene as suddenly as he had vanished, the haggard, half-naked
wizard waved his crooked staff over the sleeper's head, drew a circle
around him, pointed southward, and vanished as before. On returning to
consciousness Damon bit his tongue to assure himself that he was
really awake; his hand dashed across his eyes,--it was no vision. He
felt deathly cold, although his touch left no doubt that he was robed
in fur, his head, hands and feet covered by the same material. It was
night, and he in an air-ship, under stars he had never seen ere this,
and sweeping with great speed through a world of mountains of ice and
frozen seas, an icy desolation buried in dense fogs. Before him sat
the controlling aeronaut, white as frost and silent as death; to his
right sat a female in black, with eyes closed and the countenance of a
corpse; to his left sat none else but the saint as he had seen him in
the street of Damascus, with no evidence of being in the least
affected by the intense cold. Damon suspecting that it was a dream
within a dream, closed his eyes tightly to continue his slumber when
he heard a voice addressing him thus: "Son of Mianolis the Wise, know
that thou art in the chariot of Auster, hurrying toward the great ice
regions of the south with me, thy sire's friend, and this dame, the
Witch of Endor, on whose grave thou hadst taken thy rest this last
day, thus disturbing her spirit that soars over the tomb of the body
which held it when alive. Evil would have befallen thee but for my
interposition in thy behalf, and I am indebted to thy father for
revelations in the stars and in the realms of nature, which give me
foresight and power over spirits. What thou shalt see to-night was the
awe of thy ancestors and of those who gave rise to the mightiest
progeny on earth; but hold thy breath, lest the frost congeal thy
blood, and be not alarmed even if mountains quake and oceans burst,"
was the wizard's reassuring information.

Even before the last word had been spoken an enormous column of lurid
flame and livid smoke upshot from the heart of an immense mountain,
and in a continuous flow lost itself in the clouds, a deluge of fire
ascending and descending with the tremendous crack and reverberation
of thunder. "That southernmost volcano shall mark for generations to
come the extreme limit of human penetration into the forbidding
regions of ice; the other facing it to eastward burns no more, but is
likewise an insurmountable barrier set by nature against the intrusion
of man into regions reserved for the dethroned gods. They shall in
future years be respectively known and shunned as 'Mount Erebus' and
'Mount Terror'" volunteered the wizard as an explanation, but further
mystifying the already confused aeronaut. On the highest peak of
Terror the chariot alighted, and a puff of Auster's breath dissolved
the mists around a group of crystal palaces, trimmed with gold, roofed
with silver, clustering around an all-outshining, sky-towering edifice
reaching up to an ethereal height, overarched by a blazing span of
transcendental rainbowed glories, blending into golden haze below, and
an indefinable silvery twilight above.--"Asgard," were the first
syllables uttered by the Witch of Endor.

Yes, it was Odin's celestial Court[7] where, from his throne, he
surveyed heaven and earth, and yon was He exalted high above all
others, on his shoulders the ravens Hugin and Munin, who, in ancient
times, daily traversed the world to report the happenings among the
mortal race, and at his feet the two wolves Friki and Geri, whom Odin
feeds with the meat set before him, mead alone being sufficient for
him who feeds all creatures.

    [7] In his narrative Malek, from whom this tale is derived,
    contrasted the Greek gods with those "barbaric gods of the
    north, who dwell in twilight, build their palace of the
    rainbow, hunt the wild boar, and fling winged thunder at
    their adversaries," and the function he assigned to each
    power seemed to leave no doubt that he referred to Odin's
    Court, so that I have supplied the names that he did not use.
    The Orient contains many surprises, and it appealed to me as
    one of them to find a Mohammedan Parsee familiar with Norse
    mythology as a tradition of the East. Malek, however, always
    claimed that the Parsees are the best educated people in the
    East.

Overpowering as was the presence of Odin on his throne, another
spectacle forced itself on Damon's vision. In front of Valhalla's
portal, an entrance as wide as the entire hall, a desperate struggle
was raging between redoubtable combatants, who struck at each other
with appalling fury. The broad arena was already strewed with numerous
bodies cut to pieces. A relentless frenzy appeared to have seized
those who were still engaged in the exterminating feud, while the gods
looked on with complacence, as though the deathful affair was a mere
tournament. When the battle was over there was but one hero left, and
he bleeding from many wounds. Presently there came a blast from a horn
in Valhalla, which sent a breath of animation through the bulky bodies
of the slaughtered. Their wounds closed, their severed limbs knitted
and healed, their eyes opened, their frames quivered, straightened and
pulsated with life. They rose, picked up their weapons, and
straightway repaired to the festive hall where throngs of shining
elves attended on them with food and drink. Damon knew then that these
were the immortal heroes who, having fallen in battle, were permitted
to dwell among the gods, partaking of the meat of Shrimnir, the
ever-reviving boar, and of the mead of the she-goat Heidrun. What
looked like a fierce battle was simply an amusement.

The feast was rudely interrupted by a note of alarm sounded by
Heimdall, the sleepless sentinel of Odin's Court. Heimdall's business
is to make the round of the borders of heaven to prevent intruders
from ascending by the way of Bifrost, that is the bridge built of the
rainbow's light which links earth to Odin's ethereal Court. He is
especially anxious to intercept the mischievous giants who are ever on
the alert to annoy the powers of Asgard. As Heimdall's ears are so
fine that he hears growing of the grass and of the wool on a sheep's
back, it is no wonder that his warning of impending danger startled
the gods. Thialfi, Thor's inseparable attendant and the swiftest
messenger of Asgard, was forthwith despatched northward, whence,
according to Heimdall's information, the storm was coming, while the
gods and the heroes made ready for the emergency, whatever it might
be. Invincible Thor, whose terrific hammer, Miölnir, splits mountains,
and returns to the hand of the god when hurled against a foe, girded
himself with his belt, which redoubles his terrors, and put on his
iron gloves to render the shock of his mallet irresistible.

They soon beheld Thialfi returning all astounded, with tidings which
made Thor's veins swell with rage.--"A burning sun, O great Odin,
accompanied by a host of gods, goddesses, and their dependents, carry
with them hitherward a city of supernal palaces, and will be upon us
before thy will can be heard in council," reported Thialfi. Almost
simultaneous with these words fell the first beam of a golden flood on
the brilliant domes and towers of Asgard. Night fled to the darkest
recesses of Antarctic gloom; the snow softened; the icebergs glittered
like mountains of jewels; whale, dolphin and sea-lion gamboled with
delight, but the black elves, who dread the sun, were turned by
myriads into stones. Of vegetable life there was not as much as a
blade of grass to be seen; not a withered leaf, nor a dry shrub to
greet the radiant orb. In his all-knowing wisdom Odin exclaimed: "It
is the Olympian Thunderer who comes this way; if it means peace we
shall open our hall to welcome him; should it mean war, it will be thy
task, Thor, to drive him hence with ruin." Quick as thought did
Phoebus suspend his blazing chariot in mid-heaven, eastward of Mount
Erebus, which, crowned with light and glory, was instantaneously
turned into an Olympus by the fiat of creative powers. Phoebus caused
the earth to thaw; Pan called forth a garden of Hesperian richness;
Ceres conjured up a crop of golden grain where glaciers had been
slowly grinding their way for numberless cycles; the fire-spitting
Erebus smiled like May, garlanded by Flora, every god and goddess
contributing his or her share to create an Elysium in the most dreary
of ice-buried deserts.

In less time than it takes to tell it, Jupiter established himself in
a manner which left in Odin no doubt that the whilom sovereign of
Olympus had come to stay. Thor burned for action, but Odin restrained
his impetuous son, reminding him that if he had the rock-blasting
mallet to hurl, so had the Olympian chief something to send in return,
which it might be wise to avoid if possible. First the most guileful
schemer of Odin's Court was to be employed to ascertain the real
purpose of the thunderer's arrival; and this was the malicious Loki,
one of the hostile giants, who had succeeded in securing a foothold in
Asgard.

Loki's nature may be judged by his three offspring; they are the wolf
Fenris, the Midgard serpent, and Hela, that is death. Fenris could not
be allowed to roam at large; but to chain him was a problem the gods
alone could solve. Every kind of chain having been tried in vain, the
mountain spirits were required to fashion one that should not yield
like cobweb to the teeth of the horrid monster. It was made of the
beards of women, the noise of the cat's paw, the breath of fishes, the
roots of stones, the spittle of birds, and the sensitiveness of bears;
it was as pleasant to the touch as a silken cord, and was named
Glupnir. With this fetter on his neck Fenris was rendered harmless.
His twin, the Midgard serpent, is so enormous that her length is
thrown around the earth like a belt, she holding her tail in her
mouth. Hela dwells in Elvidnir, a black hall in dark Niffleheim. She
feeds on hunger, cuts her food with starvation, decks her bed with
misery, employs slowness as her maid, delay as her servant; her
threshold is precipice, her tapestries burning anguish. The father of
this precious triplet was not a little pleased to be thus honored with
the important embassy to the sovereign of the Olympian dynasty,
especially since the message was but little short of an ultimatum.
Loki's mind was not of a frame to be surprised at anything, or
intimidated by any display of might; but the stream of blinding light
he had to face, as he turned toward the point of his destination,
caused his eyes to water, wholly unused as he was to a splendor which
made Asgard's rainbow pale, as does the moon before the rising sun.
Whether it was for a purpose or by chance, Phoebus darted his rays
with piercing penetration, focussing them on the visage of Odin's
envoy, and his chariot, a master work of Hephæstus, forged of
glittering metal, and set with resplendent gems, moved in an orbit
with an ever-widening periphery. Winged Mercury met Loki half way,
bade him stop by a wave of his Caduceus, and required him to give an
account of his mission. Satisfied with the answer, Mercury led the way
to the gate of clouds guarded by the goddess Seasons, and Loki soon
found himself in the radiant palace of Jupiter than which there could
be nothing loftier and more glorious under the stars. Here the deities
meet in council in the assembly hall of their chief, and here they
indulge the divine feast of ambrosia and nectar served by the
ineffably lovely goddess Hebe, while Apollo delights the immortals
with the ravishing strains of his lyre, accompanied by the song of the
nine Muses.

Ushered into the awful presence of the Olympian thunderer, Loki beheld
himself in the midst of a galaxy of deities, whose various attributes
and aspects would have astonished him had they not been eclipsed by
the overpowering grandeur of the son of Saturnus, who, enthroned in
supernal majesty, with the Ægis, shining like the sun before him, and
his thunder-speeding eagle next to him, formed a striking contrast to
Odin's dimmer environments.

At the sight of Loki, Apollo struck his lyre, the Muses joined their
heavenly voices to swell the melody, and Hebe served to all the food
and drink of the gods, including Odin's envoy in the divine
conviviality. But ambrosia and nectar affected Loki's palate so
differently from the meat of the boar Shrimnir and the mead of the
she-goat Heidrun that the first quaff of the new beverage made his
facial muscles contract and distend in so ludicrous a fashion that the
vast hall resounded with the laughter of the Olympians. Loki did not
like the idea of being made the butt of ridicule, but, though stung to
the quick, joined in the merriment at his expense, there being no hope
for vengeance thus far. Required to state the purport of his message,
he began thus:

"It is Odin's wish that peace prevail betwixt his Court and thine, O
mighty Chief, and I am sent to remind thee, that when Alfadur had
doomed thy rule and his in Midgard, a new order having risen with a
new time, the compact was that thou withdraw to the fields swept by
Boreas, the Valkyrior kindling the north lights for thy benefit, and
he, undeterred by severer cold and longer night, should settle in this
drearier end of earth, where Day returns but for a double month,
allowing Night and Frost to rule supreme. What means thy coming hither
with such consuming heat, such pomp as make Odin's bleak retreat
unbearable, unless he strive to hold by force what is his by treaty?
In substance this is Odin's message. As guests he welcomes thee and
thine with all Valhalla has to entertain, and honors powers akin to
him in weal and woe, who had tasted the bitters of dethronement and
exile. But if thy purpose be to fix a permanent abode within the
bounds of Odin's hitherto undisputed empire, war will be the outcome;
and war with Asgard means chaos and the end."

The thunderer shook his locks; his eagle's eye flashed fire. Among the
superior gods the face of Mars glowed like a meteor. Minerva assumed
a menacing air, and the others gave evidence of a stern determination
to go to the bitter end in whatever part they were able to sustain the
right and dignity of their challenged head. But Jupiter, inclined
toward conciliation if possible, dismissed Loki with earnest mien,
promising his answer should reach Odin forthwith. And forthwith
Mercury was at Loki's heels, and proceeded with him to Asgard, where
Odin gave ear to Jupiter's reply thus conveyed.

"Great Odin, the cloud-compelling power who wields the thunderbolt,
but whose old sovereignty has been lamentably curtailed, deplores his
condition and thine. True, when the empire over Midgard had to be
abandoned in favor of Alfadur's anointed, the extremities of earth
alone afforded refuge from the universal spread of those hateful
inspirations which, like a deluge, submerged the better
world,--synagogue, church, or mosque supplanting those pantheons of
art, poetry and beauty, which, in the golden age of dream and fable,
song, dance and free love, made man as happy as an unbridled child.
When the time had come for our stern trials, it is remembered that,
to render our banishment bearable, thou hast benignly agreed to let
the Olympian dynasty retreat northward of the habitable world, thou
and thine being more seasoned to endure the severer rigors of this
inclement zone. But whither flee from the ever-swelling might of the
cross and the crescent? Not satisfied with the conquest of blessed
Midgard, their votaries dare penetrate the very extremes of the frigid
north, and the cross may be seen where neither wolf nor vulture can
breathe. Yea, the western hemisphere, hitherto unknown to the world,
is being discovered, and ere long will bristle with the spires of a
myriad churches. This extreme alone seems forever barred against the
intrusion of man, its terrors bringing death to him;--night, frost and
sterility are here in league against mortal flesh. Necessity forced
upon our father the resolution to seek once more a new home where,
undisturbed by the detestable symbols of new creeds, we may continue
with as much comfort as powers inalienable insure for us. Jupiter
sends thee peace, O, mighty Odin, not that he shrinks from war, or
heeds threats, but because of his benign temper--unless provoked, when
his wrath would prove too much even for the giants on whom Asgard has
a watchful eye. For it is he who made Saturnus disgorge his progeny,
and holds him chained in the deeps of Erebus."

Mercury's bold language came near to costing him his head. Thor was
restrained with difficulty by his father from sending his hammer
against the brazen front of Jupiter's messenger, who was, however,
allowed to depart unmolested. There was great commotion in Valhalla,
and Odin sent his last word to the intruders requiring them to vacate
the invaded heights forthwith, or Asgard would proceed to expel them
by force. Thialfi imparted this warning to the Olympians and was
dismissed with scorn. Heimdall's horn, Giallar, summoned all the Gods
and heroes to battle, while Thor held his mallet in readiness to do
fearful execution.

Odin's terrific frown was the signal given for the engagement; it
isolated the hostile encampment, giving it the appearance of an
illumined island in an ocean of dense night. The moments of suspense
were being utilized on both sides to call in and muster all the
reserves available. Nobody was happier than the mischievous Loki, who
was charged to communicate by the roots of the Ygdrasil tree with the
inhabitants of Jotunheim, it being the place where those prodigious
giants live, the glove of one of whom Thor had once mistaken for a
cavern wherein he spent a night, and was disturbed in his sleep by the
snoring of the colossus that shook him like an earthquake.

Should those Jotuns be slow in coming, Loki was to rouse Ymir from his
rest, Ymir the terrific giant Frost, whose blood is the seas, whose
body forms the earth, whose bones are the mountains, whose skull is
the heavens, whose brains are the clouds and what they discharge in
the shape of rain or snow, and whose eyebrows supplied the material
for the making of Midgard, the habitable portion of the globe. Ymir
sleeps under the Ygdrasil tree whose branches extend to every quarter
of the universe, while its three roots connect Asgard with Niffleheim
and Jotunheim. Ymir's disturbed slumbers make the earth quake and
shudder; his awaking would bring about the end of things. Loki's
malice had never been more gratified, he having thus far been an
unwelcome presence among the gods of Asgard, who had even once gone to
the trouble of slaying him for treason to Baldur; but Loki had another
life to spare, and here he was bustling, busier than ever before.

Neither were they on Erebus idle. The response to Odin's threatening
scowl was an intensified light and such a heat as began to dissolve
whatever had remained frozen as stone since Time outspread his wings.
Phoebus assumed the terrors of a bursting hell, so that whatever life
there was in the sea buried itself deep under its surface. With a due
appreciation of his dreadful adversaries, Jupiter arrayed himself in
his most appalling panoply, and called on Tartarus to bring to light
the pack of Titans prominent among whom were Cottus, Briareus and
Gyes, each one having a hundred hands and fifty heads, well known as
the subduers of Saturnus, who indulged the unpaternal habit of
feasting on his own offspring. Useless to add, the other Olympians
were prepared for the fray, but they waited for the aggressive deed to
come from Asgard.

It came like a dart of lightning. Enraged by the consuming heat, Thor
aimed a fatal blow at the sun's fiery steeds, hoping to shatter at one
stroke the entire team. With its unfailing accuracy Miölnir struck the
glowing chariot. Phoebus had a narrow escape, holding tightly the
reins; the horses reared wildly, bleeding from many wounds, which
closed, however, by virtue of their deathless substance. But as the
mallet, by its nature, returned to Thor's grasp, the god roared like a
hundred lions; it was a red-hot mass of metal and could not be handled
before another fling had passed it through a fathom's depth of a
glacier's icy bed. By the time Thor was ready to renew his experiment
he felt himself lifted off his feet and hurled headlong into an abyss
back of Asgard. Such was the effect of a lightning bolt sent by
Jupiter's hand, who had ascended the azurean height of his citadel
whence he caused an ominous thunder-cloud to overshadow the Court of
Odin. Though dazed by the blasting shock and the fall, Thor was on his
feet, and from a cliff, which he quickly ascended, winged his hammer
with unerring precision against the cloud-enshrouded tower of Erebus.
Miölnir was met half way by another fulmination of the Olympian
thunderer, and the collision of the missiles reverberated like the
crack of doom.

Not less fierce was the engagement of the other powers on both sides,
who, without deploying into battle array, strove with prodigious
might, the one stunning or hurting the other. Malicious Loki, hugely
amused to see the whilom invincible Thor wheel through the air and
land ignominiously in a chasm, assumed the colossal proportions of the
giant race to which he virtually belonged, making effective use of his
enormous limbs. Having picked out Mars as his target, he aimed an
iceberg at the Olympian war-dog who was inflicting terrible punishment
on the gods and heroes of Asgard; but Neptune was at hand with a
tremendous billow of tepid water warmed by Phoebus; it struck the
frozen mass, deflecting it from its fatal course, so that there was at
once a great splash and a harmless crash.

The battle continued to rage along the line, the elements of fire,
water, wind and earth being wielded with whelming impetuosity. Between
Thor and Jupiter the duel was incessant, with no turn in favor of
Odin's most redoubtable combatant. In the general confusion Loki threw
himself with a force on the enemy's flank, endeavoring thus to attack
the gate which he had been permitted to enter as Odin's messenger.
From his cloudy height the Olympian chief discerned the move of the
perfidious strategist, brandished one of his forked lightning-bolts,
and Asgard beheld with amazement one of its mightiest hurled into
oblivion.

Odin surveyed the situation, and recognized the hopelessness of the
struggle, even if Ymir could be caused to budge and the giants of
Jotunheim arrived in time. Where Thor failed who could succeed? And
the dreaded Titans were likely to appear on the scene at any moment.
Thialfi was, therefore, directed to recall Thor, and ask the Olympians
to suspend hostilities, pending the consideration of a peaceful
settlement. The brightening of the atmosphere around Asgard indicated
Odin's change of mind. Jupiter agreed to a truce, and Phoebus relaxed
the severity of his unbearable heat. Odin declared himself willing to
withdraw his Court to the extreme south, provided the Olympians would
not follow him thither. Jupiter swore the irrevocable oath attested by
the river Styx, that there shall be no further encroachments
hereafter, come what may. And Mercury was instructed to convey
peaceful greetings to Odin. "Let our brother know that we properly
appreciate his magnanimous offer to withdraw further south; that we
reluctantly waged war against a kindred power dethroned by Him who is
above all enthroned. No, not thus shall we part, mailed in threatening
panoply, with grim war bristling and sullen. Festive joy, cordial
intercourse and divine conviviality shall mark the season of our
conciliation. Great Odin and his Court are to be honored in this
hall. Since man has ceased to pay us worshipful homage, our own
felicity be our sole care." In response to this effusion of friendship
Odin signified his pleasure by ordering his black elves, to whose
skilful workmanship Thor was indebted for his wonderful hammer, to
throw an arched span of gold over the hollow which separated the
mountains of Terror and Erebus. But the long-nosed, dirty little
artificers durst not face Phoebus, whose glare brought them death;
wherefore the blazing chariot of the sun-god made room for Aurora
Australis, when the bridge rose like a vision, competing with the
rainbow in multicolored brilliancy. For once Vulcan confessed surprise
at the exquisite mastery in metal work in which he had thought himself
unrivalled, while Pluto was amazed at the lavishness of the precious
material, which he knew to be limited in quantity. Once more did
Heimdall sound his horn, this time to proclaim the opening of the
grand feast in which all the gods, goddesses, heroes and dependencies
of Asgard were required to participate.

On their side the Olympians were neither to be eclipsed in splendor
nor outdone in all that goes to make a feast of gods. Robed in
supernal glory, each god and goddess, surrounded by their retinues,
wore the symbols of their respective powers and attributes, but stood
overawed by the transcendent magnificence of their chief, whom no
mortal eye could behold without being consumed. From his throne above
the clouds, surrounded by his family, who shone like stars, Jupiter
beheld Odin issue from Valhalla, mounted on his eight-legged steed,
Sleipnir, who could leap over mountains. Him followed Frigga and
Freya, his wife and daughter, the one as beautiful as Iris, the other,
who stood for love, blushing like sweet Aurora, escorted by Thor and
his inseparable attendant, Thialfi. Like a stream of radiant gold,
flowed behind them a host of sunny elves, diminutive creatures,
stirring the air with weird music. In their wake, leading another host
of those unsightly elves clad in burnished brass, and blowing sonorous
instruments of the same metal, came Frey in a chariot drawn by the
boar Gullinbursti, along with Heimdall bestriding his horse, Gulltopp.
The train's rear was taken up by a great number of inferior gods,
heroes and mountain giants, as well as their colossal frost
companions.

Gratifying his mischievous nature, Cupid perched himself on the main
entrance guarded by Seasons, and as this goddess opened it to admit
Odin and his cortege, a shower of love's arrows descended on the
unsuspicious powers of Asgard, who were received by Pluto and Neptune,
and led into the assembly hall of Jupiter's palace. Here the Olympian
dynasty were found standing, except Jupiter and Juno, who likewise
rose, while Venus, wearing the Cestus which imparts ineffable grace to
the wearer, welcomed the head of Asgard and escorted him to a lofty
throne at the left hand of her father. A sweet fragrance was diffused
among the star-like assembly by a heavenly smile from Jupiter, who was
at once captivated by the eyes of Freya, the goddess of love. Odin
found it impossible to make a secret of his enchantment by Venus,
while Thor had no eye for anyone but Hebe. Heimdall found in Juno the
crown of sweetness, Thialfi bowed to Diana, and Frey paid his tender
respects to Minerva. The other deities selected their partners in
accordance with their natural bent of mind, or destined appointment in
the divine economy.

Without, the subordinate attendants grouped themselves harmoniously,
so that no sooner were the strains of Apollo's lyre heard, accompanied
by the enravishing song of the Muses, than the broad spaces between
the dwellings of the gods teemed with the airy dancers. Elf, nymph,
naiad, satyr and dryad abandoned themselves to the spell of Apollo's
music. This was only a faint reflex of what was doing in the
star-illumined hall of the Olympian thunderer. Here the celestial food
and beverage were being offered by Hebe, after the first grand march
of the superior gods. Odin, who never tasted of Shrimnir's flesh, and
indulged in but drink of the mead of the she-goat Heidrun, now emptied
a capacious goblet of nectar handed him by Hebe, at the same time that
one was given to Thor. The head of Asgard's Court found it hard to
swallow the strange liquid, so unlike mead, and, unable to retain it,
ejected it in a manner to bring up the Olympian host and his entire
house. As to Thor, the unspeakable drink and the mirth provoked by his
ludicrous grimaces enraged him to such an extent that, but for the
subduing charm of Hebe's look, he would have dashed his mallet against
the very throne which filled gods with awe. Good nature prevailed,
however, and as the refreshments passed around, the hilarity grew at
the cost of Asgard.

Now struck Terpsichore her instrument, the graces joining to swell the
strains which cause the gods to move in rhythmic measure. Looked at
from the vantage ground occupied by Damon, the divine spectacle
resembled a scattered constellation, the stars moving in pairs, then
grouping in clusters, then spreading in lines, straight and curved,
then forming in circles, then breaking up to renew and multiply the
harmonious evolutions. There appeared nothing to intercept the
minutest detail of the celestial scene, and Damon was intoxicated with
felicity, ear and eye being equally ravished. While the feast was at
its height, Erebus shook with a convulsion which reminded Jupiter of
the summons he had sent to Tartarus, and that the Titans had access to
the upper world by way of the lava-vomiting mountain. At the same
instant Heimdall gave the alarm, his ear having recognized the tramp
of the Jotuns for whom Odin had sent his son, Hermond the Nimble.
Quick as were the gods in rushing to arms, and in manning every
strategic and vulnerable point, they were not quick enough to prevent
a collision between Briareus on one side and Skrymir on the other,
each one sustained by his gigantic followers, who tore up glaciers and
made icebergs fly as flakes of snow driven by a storm. As if by a
tacit understanding, Thor and Jupiter combined their terrific
instruments of destruction, hurling them from opposite directions at
the monstrous combatants, who heaped Pelion on Ossa in their furious
efforts to crush each other. Briareus disappeared like a flash in the
womb of Erebus, drawing his companions after him; the Jotuns took to
their heels as fast as their gigantic limbs could carry them.

But there was no clearing of the atmosphere. The mountains trembled,
the air grew oppressive and seemed saturated with fetid gases. A
moment's ominous quiet was broken by another far-reaching convulsion,
followed by a crack which terrified the gods and threw Damon out of
his seat deep down into a chasm. The womb of Erebus opened wide. A
deluge of fire burst from the bowels of the earth, melting glaciers
and causing frozen seas to boil. Heaven glowed like a furnace, and
Damon beheld with terror a stream of liquid metal pour down in a
cataract from a height above his head. His attempt to flee from
destruction proved his limbs to be of lead; he could not budge. He was
going to be buried under fathoms of molten ore. Once more he tried to
get to his feet, the glowing metal bursting on him from every side. In
growing terror he grasped for something to assist him in his struggle
for life, striking out right and left. His numbness gave way; his
limbs softened in their joints, and a vitalizing energy enabled him to
raise his head. What did he see? A full-rounded moon shedding a
silver flood on a slumbering landscape, glorified by a weird maze of
far-away dazzling white, varied by domes and spires of other hues. It
was neither Asgard nor the heavenly city built by Hephæstus; it was
Damascus, oblivious of her impending doom. Damon was grateful to be
here, conscious of the fact that the wizard he had followed had but
sported with him. Yet what he had seen was worth the sacrifice. How
much greater the God of infinity, how much holier than they of Asgard
and Olympus, He with whom a myriad galaxies count for naught as He
sways the boundless Universe by the breath of His mouth!




KING SOLOMON AND ASHMODAI.


It is well known that after Solomon had succeeded his father David as
ruler over Israel he had a vision wherein the Lord gave him the choice
between riches and wisdom, and that the youthful monarch gave wisdom
the preference. In recognition of this he was not alone endowed with
an understanding heart, but was given the means of acquiring great
wealth, such as enabled him to build the most gorgeous of temples and
the most sumptuous of palaces. The secret of Solomon's power was his
possession of the Omnipotent Name engraved on his signet-ring, the use
of which he was to learn by an accident.

The first great problem Solomon was called upon to solve was how to
build God's Temple in compliance with the unaccountable injunction not
to employ iron implements in cutting, fitting or smoothing the
materials of the sacred edifice. This prohibition implied the
existence of a rock-splitting instrument of which neither the King nor
his wisest counselors had any knowledge. Eldad the lonely dweller of
the sacred caves, the reader of the stars, the wanderer of the desert,
the recorder of traditions, Eldad, who at the age of one hundred and
nineteen years had no wrinkle on his face, preserving his faculties in
all their strength by means of the occult sciences, this wizard who
was the engraver of the Ineffable Name on the King's ring, was
summoned to appear before His Majesty to answer this question:

"Thou knowest, O, Eldad, that I am to build the House of God with
materials unprepared by the use of any iron implement; no doubt
Providence has provided the means for the raising of His Sanctuary; my
advisers have failed to give me light on the mystery; should it be
beyond thy power to enlighten me on this matter, I shall not know
whither to turn for the solution of the difficulty," spoke the King.
To whom Eldad replied: "Know, O King, that in the beginning of things,
as creation was nearing its completion, before the sun of the sixth
day had withdrawn his last mellow beam from the earth, fourteen
additional wonders were called into being, things which the
foreknowledge of the All-knowing destined to play a part in this
nether world. They are, the mouth of the earth that swallowed Korah
and his rebellious followers; the mouth of the fountain known as
Miriam's Well, the unfailing spring whose flow accompanied Israel
through the desert, joining in the hymn of praise; the mouth of the
brute that spoke to Balaam, after the heathen prophet had beaten it
three times, he not having seen the angel that deterred it from
advancing; the multicolored rainbow which symbolizes God's mercy to
frail man; the manna, Israel's food for forty years; the staff
wherewith Moses performed all his miracles; the two sapphires out of
which the tablets of the Law were cut; the gems that spelt the Ten
Commandments; the letters of the alphabet; the sepulchre of Moses
never seen by a mortal eye; the ram destined to be the substitute of
Isaac when on the point of being sacrificed; the first pair of tongs,
without which no iron could ever be forged; the spirits, both good and
evil, the Sabbath having begun before bodies could be formed for some
souls, thus left forever disembodied; and the _Shamir_, a worm not
larger than a grain of barley, but stronger than rock, which it splits
by the mere touch. The _Shamir_, O, King, is the only might in
creation to do the work in accordance with the divine behest. Those
priceless gems of which the tablets and the letters thereon are cut
have been fashioned by the _Shamir_."

"That _Shamir_ shall be in my power, O, Eldad, it being there for the
building of God's house, as it was there to materialize His immutable
Word. But tell me who on earth claims possession of that wonderful
creature? Is it to be had by trade, purchase, strategy, or force?"
cried the King, deeply agitated.

"King, beyond what I have told thee my knowledge goes not. The abyss
says: It is not in me, and the ocean says: I own it not. Hitherto the
_Shamir_ has been beyond the reach of human eye. Whether it can be
had, the future will tell. Here my wisdom ends," concluded the hoary
wizard, withdrawing from the royal presence. It was late in the
evening when the King retired to a restless bed. Light and fitful as
were his slumbers, his mind was haunted by weird visions of desolate
scenes, cliffs infested with fierce carrion birds, and chasms teeming
with venomous reptiles. The first blush of the morning found the
monarch on one of his gilded balconies from which he surveyed the
floral glories of his exuberant gardens, inhaling the odoriferous
breezes of the peaceful morrow. Nature stood in her loveliness, and
animate creation seemed to breathe peace. Suddenly there was a scream
of pain in one of the towering clusters of green, and the next instant
two specimens of the feathered tribes dropped at the feet of the King.
In the talons of a carnivorous fowl was closed the tender wing of a
trembling dove as white as snow. Moved by the impulse of pity, the
King had his strong grip on the neck of the obscene bird of prey,
relieving the other, but not before the victim's wing was broken.
Great as was the anger of the King to see the poor dove bleeding and
helpless, his astonishment was greater at the instantaneous
transformation of the ferocious fowl in his grasp; fowl no more but
demon, black and mighty, swelling to enormous proportions, and
beseeching the royal captor to set him free.--"Whatever thou biddest
me I will do, O, master, the ring on thy finger giving thee power over
Ashmodai and his legions, to which I belong doing service as
commanded," stated the dark agent submissively.

"And what cause underlies thy vicious onslaught against so pure a
creature as this dove?" asked Solomon, the revelation breaking on him
that his signet-ring invested him with a power akin to omnipotence.

"A symbol of purity, the dove comes under the ban of us who are of
Ashmodai's dark legion,"[8] explained the fiend with unreserved
candor.

    [8] Talmudic angelology assigns to Ashmodai the inferior rank
    of presiding over the evil demons under the rule of Samaël
    (דשידאי רבא מלכא אשמדאי); while Matatron is the recognized chief
    of the infinite hosts teeming throughout the universe, holding
    at the same time the office of benign intercession between man
    and Supreme Grace, and Synadalphon is the next in power, standing
    on earth with his head reaching to the highest cherubim (אחד מלאג
    שמו סנדלפין החיות אצל מגיע וראשו בארץ עומד). Like Samaël and Lilith,
    Ashmodai impersonates evil in a variety of manifestations.
    Neither Dumah, the prince of the winds and the custodian of
    the dead, nor Rohab, the lord of the ocean, are to be degraded
    to the rank of Ashmodai who dwells in the clouds but depends for
    his sustenance on what the earth produces. It is to be remarked,
    however, that the Rabbis take the dark and the bright powers to
    represent physical forces co-existent with creation (קב״ה כשבקש
    .השרת מלאכי של כת ברא העולם לבראות) This idea is sustained by the
    additional assertion that the creative energy is incessant,
    Omnipotence calling forth daily new ministers to carry out His
    inscrutable designs. (מפי שיצא דיבור מכל ,דינור בנהר השרת מלאכי נבראין
    .מלאך נברא קב״ה)

"Thou shalt not go hence before I learn of thee who treasures the
_Shamir_," said Solomon firmly, assuming the demon to know something
about it.

"What art thou seeking of me, O, master, who am one of inferior rank
bending to the will of our chief Ashmodai, the mighty spirit of this
world? Him thou art to question, because he is the one to satisfy thy
demand," replied the demon. "Describe his retreat to me and its
approaches, and thou shalt go free," commanded the son of David.

"He is to be found where no creature of flesh and blood can long
endure; it is not heaven; neither is it earth; in the heart of the
Orient, on the highest peak of the highest mountain range, a hollow
summit crowned with eternal snow, holding under seal before a recess
of frozen crystal the purest spring under the heaven to give him
drink, that is Ashmodai's retreat. Hither he descends from his
cloud-vested realm, scans the seal to assure himself that no impurity
has polluted his delicious beverage, when, having quenched his thirst,
he re-seals the fountain, gives audience to his court, who flock
hither to receive their orders, and, refreshed by slumber, re-ascends
to control the elements and survey the work of his active host," was
the information, which insured the demon's release.

In earnest consultation with his general Benaiah, Solomon matured the
plan for the attack of Ashmodai's retreat, and ere long a
well-equipped expedition of a few picked men headed by that undaunted
warrior, departed secretly. The haunt of the demoniac chief was not
only far to the south-east of the Holy Land, but it was so located
that in order to approach it the adventurers had to cross deserts,
traverse pestiferous swamps infested with scorpions and dragons, ford
wild rivers, and bridge over chasms, only to see themselves in a
labyrinth of stupendous rocks, supermounted by a chain of sky-towering
peaks lost in dense fogs. Benaiah's eagle eye swept the clouded
outlines of the snow-capped heights, trying in vain to locate the spot
to be invaded. The impenetrable curtain of shifting fogs precluded
accurate observation, and for once the dashing general felt that he
was more in need of daring and of patience than of strategy. Retiring
with his men to a cave at the base of the mountain, Benaiah took a
position which commanded the loftiest point of the summit, hoping that
something would occur to betray the object of his quest. Benaiah was
struck by the contrast of the frowning mountain-crest on one hand,
and the sun's pure effulgence on the other. As he had his eyes riveted
on the broken summit, the dense mass of fog darkened perceptibly. A
noise as of a boisterous sea repelled by a rocky shore was the
precursor of a tempest and an earthquake which convulsed the entire
region within and without, thunder and lightning adding to the uproar.
The eternal snows on the crest rose pulverized by the fury of a
chaotic storm,--a hurricane intermixed with flashes of red fire,--the
whole reducing itself within a few seconds to a funnel-shaped
whirlwind, revolving with furious speed, its pivot centred in a hollow
betwixt mighty cliffs, rendered visible by the convulsive phenomenon.
Benaiah knew what it meant, and he was confirmed in his assumption
that Ashmodai was descending by observing the same disturbance a few
hours later when the demon re-ascended to his airy empire.

  [Illustration: "Like a thunderbolt striking to the centre of a
    hurricane, the demon shot down."
      Page 173.]

Like a good strategist, the general took a little time to study the
situation. The ascent of the mountain had to be made with great
care, and the proceedings of the chief demon observed from as near a
station as was compatible with safety. The climbing was attended with
much toil and great danger, but the point was reached, the ground
surveyed, and a hiding place secured in a recess barred by a wall of
solid ice. Here everything was held in readiness for the next step.

If Ashmodai's descent startled the adventurers from a distance,
nearness to the spot of his landing filled them with dismay, the
atmospheric and subterranean agitation threatening to sweep them out
of their hiding place. Like a thunderbolt striking to the centre of a
hurricane, the demon shot down, unsealed his well, plunged his lips in
the beryl fluid, drawing up a great quantity, and then sealed it up
again. He was hardly ready when the table-land around him was thick
with files of demons, who arrived to report what had been
accomplished, and to take orders for new tasks. They were all chiefs,
of various ranks, each one having legions to carry out his behests.
From the reports and the schemes discussed it was clear that they
represented three kinds of spirits as to their relation to
mankind--of hostility, friendliness, and neutrality. There was a
division of labor,--hostile, benevolent, and neutral.

It is impossible to say how the daring band of interlopers would have
fared at the hands of the terrible chief and his demonic army had not
Benaiah possessed the Omnipotent Name to shield him from discovery. As
matters stood the demons, unconscious of any unwelcome presence,
departed, leaving Ashmodai to take his accustomed slumber, after which
he darted up like a flash, with the phenomenal accompaniment of
elemental disturbance as before. Now came Benaiah's opportunity.
Without touching the seal on the cover of the well, the contents were
drawn out through a hole skilfully bored beneath the surface of the
liquid. This done, the hole was carefully closed, and another one was
bored on the opposite side at a higher level, through which wine was
poured to fill the emptied well. With every trace removed to avoid
suspicion, and every detail ready for the emergency, Benaiah waited
patiently for the next day when everything passed off as before,
except the astonishment of the dreaded power when he found that his
well contained wine instead of water. Doomed by destiny to fall into
the trap set for him, and urged by a parching thirst, Ashmodai took
but little time to consider the advisability of drinking the
intoxicating beverage, balancing Scriptural texts _pro_ and _con_, and
soon deciding to try its effect on his semi-ethereal nature. This was
just what Solomon and his general had counted on. Ashmodai had
scarcely dismissed his military Council when the wine began to do its
work; he felt as he had never felt before, and he discussed with
himself the singular mood into which he found himself plunged, in what
way he could not account for, the sensation being wholly new in his
superhuman experience. Sleep was on him, and there he lay, stretched
out as helpless as a senseless block. Benaiah was at hand with a chain
rendered resistless by the Omnipotent Name engraved upon its links.
Slipping it around the waist and the neck of the prince of demons, his
potency was disposed of. Ashmodai's consternation when awakened words
cannot describe. A roar of rage darkened all nature, shook the
mountains to their foundation, and horrified all his legions who fled
to hide themselves in the deepest chasms, even in the bowels of the
earth and under the waters of the sea. For a moment Benaiah lost his
speech, while his companions fell prostrate on the ground. The demon
assumed every shape of horror to overawe the enemies of his freedom.
In a few moments he gave himself the deterring shapes of all that is
monstrous and deadly in nature, from the enraged tiger to the hissing
serpent whose bite is death; all in vain.--"In the Name of the Most
High, I, Benaiah, chief of King Solomon's army, do herewith command
thee, Ashmodai, mighty Prince of genii, to follow me to the seat of
the wisest King, who needs thy aid to build the Temple of God."

The conjuration conquered all resistance, and the demon was led off
disarmed and humiliated. Realizing the hopelessness of gaining
anything by violence, Ashmodai feigned submissiveness, assumed the
form and manner of a most polished and affable courtier, and, ushered
into the presence of the King, charmed His Majesty by discourse of
things far above the comprehension of ordinary men.

"Thou art to deliver to me the _Shamir_ so that God's House be built
without the use of iron implements," said Solomon to Ashmodai.

"The _Shamir_ is not in my keeping, great King; the spirit of the
ocean has entrusted it to the fowl Awza that it be preserved forever
in a state of perfection," replied Ashmodai, adding, "and no man can
come near that bird."

"Tell me where Awza breeds her young," commanded the King.

"South of the great desert there is a mountain with a towering cliff
and walls so steep and smooth that a spider has difficulty to climb
it. On the top of that rock is the nest of Awza, a fowl with claws of
steel and eyes of fire, swift as the swallow, larger than the vulture,
and fiercer than the eagle," answered the demon.

Again Benaiah was placed at the head of an expedition, and many were
the hardships before the solitary pile rose before the eyes of the
indomitable general. There was neither a bird to be seen nor a nest.
The head of the precipitous rock was so high above the clouds that
there seemed no possibility of scaling it. But Benaiah was full of
resources and had anticipated the difficulty by bringing with him a
pair of pigeons. Having left a man with the female bird this side of
the mountain, the general made a detour for the opposite side with the
male, tied a cord to his foot, and allowed him to rise. Guided by his
instinct, the pigeon soon soared above the rock, descending to join
his mate. This accomplished, a heavier cord was trailed over, followed
by a still heavier rope strong enough to lift a man. This man was
Benaiah who, in the dark of night, was hauled up by his attendants.
Awza was thus to be circumvented.

Great was the general's joy when he found himself before the nest
occupied by its fledglings, Awza being happily away in search for
food. A transparent stone is laid securely over the nest. Awza
arrives, finds her fledglings imprisoned, hungry, and crying. With
motherly tenderness she hurries to split the stone by applying the
_Shamir_. Benaiah's great chance is come. From behind a bowlder he
bursts forth and frightens the bird; she drops the invaluable worm.
Benaiah pounces upon it like an eagle. The male bird is soon on the
spot. A desperate struggle ensues between the enraged birds and the
daring Benaiah. He is armed against iron claws, and is not deterred by
fiery eyes. He has the trophy and he holds it, placing it in due time
at the feet of his master, to the great surprise of Ashmodai. Thus is
the building of God's Temple proceeded with, the _Shamir_ splitting
and fitting the materials.

Solomon's thirst for wisdom grew with his growing consciousness of the
painful limitations as regards its acquisition by man, and Ashmodai
availed himself of the King's avidity for knowledge in the hope of
throwing him off his guard. He taught him the secrets of the vegetable
and mineral kingdoms, and gave him the clue to intercourse with animal
creation, including the mind-reading faculty. As a final achievement
he suggested the weaving of a prodigious air-float large enough to
transport the King on his throne, an army fully equipped, and a host
of spirits. On this air-ship, sixty miles square, Solomon, ever
accompanied by Ashmodai, traversed great distances, soaring above the
clouds, higher than the eagle, and looking down on earth like a god.
Woven by genii of the most subtile essences of nature, the texture of
that air-island was of azurean translucency, green-blue in color,
floating in the sun's radiance like a rippled sea bathed in gold.

But the marvel of the marvelous equipage was its circular pavilion
vast in extent and fashioned of rainbow-tints, which photographed,
enormously magnified, whatever came within the range of the eye that
controlled its course, laying bare the mysteries of land and ocean,
and revealing the multifarious activities of the spirit-world under
the rule of Ashmodai. Here Solomon's wonder-throne, ascended by seven
steps, each one guarded by a pair of magnificent animals chosen from
the respective species of the lion, the elephant, the tiger, the bear,
the serpent, the antelope, and the eagle, stood on a dais, lofty and
brilliant, eclipsed only by the monarch's crown which rivaled the sun
in splendor. Solomon began to believe that he was really more than
human, and Ashmodai lost no chance to swell the autocrat's overbearing
vanity. Solomon was so delighted with his triumph over the chief of
demons and the deep secrets he had wrested from him, that he
indefinitely deferred setting him free long after the Temple had been
dedicated with grand ceremony, and, thanks to rock-bursting _Shamir_,
cargoes of gold were pouring into the royal treasury.

One early morning the sovereign of the richest kingdom upon earth bade
the winds raise and waft his imponderable encampment toward the rising
day, he being enthroned in his pavilion with Ashmodai at his feet. Up
soared the magic float, lighter than air, transparent as ether, and
stronger than adamant, hurrying eastward as an undulating firmament,
suffused with purple and gold. The soundless vast above, coupled with
the radiant flood that broke from the East, and the amazing
kaleidoscope of animal and spirit life startlingly reflected by the
walls of the glowing pavilion, overawed the mind of the most daring
of kings, who exclaimed: "How great the all-powerful God, in whose
infinity we are not more than an atom in the universe of matter!"

"Great King, thy head is the microcosm of the immensity whose
contemplation overpowers thee. The heavens hide nothing which man
cannot own if he but knew how," said Ashmodai with a pull at his
chain.

"Thou art speaking riddles, potent spirit. Give me certainty that my
grave is not the end, and thy chains shall be broken," cried Solomon.

"King, disembodied thou art my like, spirit of the everlasting Source,
unchanged by change, but for the time dimmed, because engrossed with
what is unethereal here. Yet even in thy mortal coil I can give thee,
if restored to liberty, by virtue of thy signet-ring, a glimpse of
things above thy highest dreams, provided thou wilt give me leave to
stimulate thy spiritual essence for the transmutation by harmony such
as, at thy bidding, I can cause my spirits to produce," promised
Ashmodai.

"Then let the air vibrate with melody such as will fit my grosser
substance for thy suggested change," commanded Solomon, thoughtlessly.

At this the atmosphere trembles with the voices of a myriad chorus,
throwing the King into an ecstasy of delight, ravishing his soul and
causing his tears to flow. In his ecstatic transport the monarch bids
Ashmodai to come within the reach of his hand; a touch breaks the
chains of the wily demon, another movement of the hand delivers to him
the signet-ring--and then--the symphony sounds like the hissing of
twenty thousand serpents, night swallows the rays of the sun, a burst
as of a hundred batteries shakes the firmament, a tremendous pillar of
lurid flame shoots up into the height of azure, from its core darts
forth a bundle and vanishes beyond the sea;--it is Solomon whom, by
the might of his regained breath, Ashmodai has hurled to the end of
earth,[9] allowing him to fall unhurt; the ring the demon drops into
the deep. All this is the work of a moment, after which the atmosphere
is clear and bright, the hissing ceases, and Solomon is on his
throne,--that is it is Ashmodai in the guise of Solomon robed in
royalty to mock the power of the castaway autocrat.

    [9] The old version of the Talmud has it thus: "Solomon sent
    Benaiah to bring him the Shamir from Ashmodai, and he threw
    him out of his kingdom." מאשמדאי השמיר לו להביא לבניהו שלך שלמה
    ממלכותו והשליכו

Who could be wise enough to unmask the fraudulent usurper? Who would
blame a spirit for avenging an outrageous humiliation? The court was
informed that the chief of demons had escaped, and everything went on
as before, including the tender attention due to the inmates of the
royal harem.

Poor Solomon picked himself up in a far distant land, astonished and
confused. His memory failed him; he stood transformed in face and
form, and only darkly remembered that he had been a king somewhere.
From his situation he could well infer that he had had some foolish
dream of pomp and lordship. In reality he was a homeless beggar,
shattered in health and unsound in mind. Starvation forced him to beg
for bread, and vagabonds were his bed-fellows in the wretched
retreats open to the outcasts of humanity. His hours were divided
between waking and dreaming; sane moments were followed by invasions
of melancholy. Sometimes he doubted that his name was Solomon, that
the world around him was real. A hard time was in store for the
befooled wise man. Slowly the faculty of memory returned, and the
singular circumstances which placed him where he found himself rose
clearly before his recollection.

However, the knowledge of things immaterial which Solomon had acquired
by his intimate intercourse with Ashmodai afforded him some help and
comfort during his long wanderings from place to place,--unhonored,
often the target of ridicule to such as heard him descant on his
Solomonic pretensions. Great was his pain on hearing one day a strange
traveller speak of the real Solomon's wisdom, his glorious rule, and
the uncounted wealth that reached him by land and sea. "Can it be that
I am mad? If Solomon reigns in Jerusalem, who am I?" asked of himself
the confounded beggar king, and prayed humbly that he might be
enlightened as to the nature of his condition. His pride was broken.

One late afternoon the royal wayfarer arrived, tired and hungry,
before the gate of an inhospitable city. At first the unfriendly
inhabitants denied him admission, but on hearing him claim the title
of Solomon the Wise, they allowed his majesty to enter, convinced that
they had a madman before them. Beyond this their hospitality did not
extend. With a crust of bread as his supper, the unpitied monarch
found no softer couch than the turf of a roofless enclosure, with many
animals as his companions. The night was cold, and the situation
tormenting for a starved man who had nothing wherewith to cover
himself. After a few hours of restless slumber, Solomon felt his limbs
so badly cramped that he was obliged to rise and walk to keep his
blood in circulation. In the dimness of a clouded moon Solomon came
near an old mare full of bruises, and so emaciated that one had no
difficulty in counting her ribs. Solomon's experience rendered him
accessible to sympathy with life in misery, and he derived sad
consolation from the sight of other creatures who were even more
wretched than he. He reflected that man is the source of great
torments and wretchedness here below in inflicting pain on creatures
entrusted him by a kind Providence.

It was about midnight when the royal beggar rose again to renew his
walk, finding it impossible to drown his worry in oblivious sleep. The
moon shone brightly, and the deep silence held the weird landscape in
magic repose, forming a strong contrast with the agitation suppressed
in the king's bosom. Presently familiar notes fell on Solomon's ear;
it was the speech of the ill-fated mare, who spoke words of sorrow to
her inexperienced family, giving them her maternal advice, now that
her end was near. With bated breath the man listened to the story of a
life-long agony, recited by a creature of the noblest species under
human control.

"Yes, I have often been whipped and kicked by my cruel master. Ah,
hunger, too, and thirst,--the heat by day and the cold by night, I
endured; toiling, toiling under the rod, and now that I am old he has
turned me out that I perish unsheltered, unfed. Too weak am I to
drive off the flies which torture me, and death will not come. Once I
was led to believe that we horses had an advantage over the animals
that are slaughtered for food. The sight of a victim's blood shed by
the carnivorous lust of man made me shudder. I have seen the head of
the fowl twisted off, have seen lambs swim in their blood, have seen
the calf taken for slaughter from the side of her dam who rent the air
with lamentation, have seen cattle felled by the deadly club in the
hand of gluttonous man. And have I not, in my younger days, been used
in the chase? Mounted on me, my master, in company of his like,
thought it great sport to unleash a pack of bloody hounds in pursuit
of a frightened hare, fox, or deer. Hunted down, the agonized
creatures fell, to be torn to pieces. Man is our devil, helpless, dumb
animals that we are. Enough is there in nature to glut his hunger. The
hen supplies him with her eggs, the cow with her milk and with butter
and cheese, and the lamb with its wool; while we carry him and his
burdens, multiply his strength in battle, and gratify his love of
pomp and pleasure. Honey, fruits, mushrooms, and a variety of grains
and vegetables should protect animate creation from his deathful
greed."

"There will be a dead fellow to-morrow," said a lusty colt made hot by
his dam's tale of woe. "That master of thine will not long be master
of mine; one kick of my hind legs will do for him; let him try it with
me; he won't whip me a second time."

"Child, never try it, if thou lovest me," cried the intelligent, but
much-abused mare. "A vicious horse, as they brand one who resents
abuse, is sure to get his double share of torture; I have tried it and
had the worst of it. Kick once your master and his vengeance will take
years to bleed you to death."

"But I won't stand it. I will kick right and left, break windows,
bones, vehicles, break whatever comes in my way, and break myself if
it must be. They will be kept busy watching my legs; I won't stand
it," answered the colt determinedly.

"Thou mayest as well kick against a rock and have thy hind legs
broken, or throw thyself into a millpond and be drowned, as seek
revenge by hurting thy master. We are not unavenged, however. Nature,
our common mother, does not allow her offenders to go unpunished. If
man would simply be content to live on what the animal and vegetable
kingdoms freely give him, he would be a much happier, tamer, healthier
and nobler being. Chase and slaughter create that ferocious temper
which revels in bloodshed, so that his own kindred bleed, victims of
his atrocity. Child, I, too, have revolted in my time. Exasperated by
the cuts of a whip in the hand of a miscreant, I once made a wild
break for deliverance, fled madly through the street, dashed against
everything in my way,--dashed against a throng of men, women and
children, who tried vainly to escape,--did all the harm I could, and
landed bruised and breathless among the terrified children in an open
schoolyard, killing one and hurting others. Thereafter I was treated
as the savage beast, was kicked in and out of time, my legs being
fettered and my head held fast by a chain tied to the wall. When
employed, the bit in my mouth was cruelly tight; and that was all I
gained. A higher will must have decreed this to be our lot," concluded
the starving mare, lowering her head mournfully.

Solomon, whom the equine group had not noticed, approached and
astonished them by addressing them in the language they so well
understood. The luckless mare raised her head, and her glazed eyes
flashed as the soft voice of the king uttered this:

"Thou art right, Oh, noble creature, in charging thy master with
unkindness and ingratitude toward thy high-spirited race that has
rendered him invaluable service. Yea, man is as yet a child and a
slave of habit, but will in due time rise to an understanding of his
duties toward the myriad lives around him, not created for wanton
abuse or ruthless destruction. Indeed, he pays dearly for the
gratification of his lower instincts, the benign Creator having meant
him to be prompted by the gentler, deeper, sweeter qualities of his
being. The day will come when he will shudder at the idea of
sustaining his life by the immolation of others, when the flesh-eater
will be seen in the same light as the cannibal.--My name is Solomon,
and in my kingdom they called me The Wise, but my wisdom fails to
enlighten me why things are as they are when they could be so much
better. Believe me, man has tortures of body and soul, and has, like
you, his devil to plague and circumvent him. Holy Writ contains
beautiful words in praise of the horse, he, armed with thunder, nobler
than the lion, fearless as the eagle, graceful as the zebra, strong as
the wave, quick as the wind, the pride of the warrior, the pleasure of
the prince, the seat of the king. Once restored to power, I will
remember the burden of thy grievance, faithful mare, and thy race will
be benefited as far as my will shall prevail."

The horses were pleased with the sympathetic words of their
distinguished friend, and the ambitious colt offered to carry him as
far as he wished. Solomon had plenty of leisure to explain the
difficulty into which he had been plunged by the wiles of Ashmodai,
and that he was sure of restoration the moment he could enter the
gates of his beloved Jerusalem.

"May thy wisdom, thy kindness and thy kingdom spread far and wide,
Oh, King! so that my helpless offsprings be spared the torments that I
have endured during the length of my days!" prayed the mare, with a
tremor which betrayed extreme weakness. The next instant saw the poor
brute tremble, stagger, fall and expire.

If Solomon had counted on an easy triumph over his formidable
adversary, his arrival at Jerusalem, after years of untold hardships
and trials, undeceived him. The city showed every indication of great
prosperity; the kingdom stood firmly established, and the brilliance
of the royal Court had no rival in the gorgeous Orient. Embassies came
to pay the homage of princedoms and empires near and far, bringing
presents of rare animals, gold, costly products, and precious stones,
and they departed overawed by the superhuman wisdom of Israel's mighty
ruler, who amazed the ambassadors not alone by addressing each one in
his native language but by showing a minute acquaintance with their
secret matters of state, and by reading their hidden thoughts. The
envoys reported to their sovereigns that a demi-god had come to reign
over an earthly kingdom.

For a shabby mendicant to overthrow a power of Ashmodai's devices and
resources was indeed a business to make even a Solomon despair of
success.

Having entered the city, the beggar-king sought the haunts of the
paupers without breathing a syllable as to his identity, lest Ashmodai
be alarmed by his presence, which was a circumstance to be feared.
Solomon the beggar knew that he looked so unlike Solomon the Wise that
he long hesitated to approach his whilom faithful Benaiah, who,
innocent of the demon's fraud, continued as dashing and as loyal as
ever before. The attempt at an interview resulted in the general's
throwing a silver coin to get rid of the importunate beggar, who dared
accost him as though he was his equal. In his despondency Solomon
turned his back on his endeared capital, roamed about for many days
distracted with grief, until, having caught sight of the sea, he fell
prostrate on the shore, prayed in great humility, wept and fell
asleep. He had a dream in which Eldad, who had died during his
wanderings, appeared to him in the guise of an angler, unloosening a
large fish from his hook which he presented to the dreamer. A scream
in the air startled Solomon from his sleep, and a slap on his cheek by
some cold thing brought him to his feet. Before him lay a fish in
contortions, above him two birds were soaring, one higher than the
other, who, in their fight for the prey, evidently had allowed it to
drop on the sleeper's face. Parched with thirst and stung by hunger,
Solomon tore the fish open, when, lo! the ring, Eldad's gift, the
all-controlling charm, was there. No sooner was it on the King's
finger than an appalling earthquake shook the shore, while from the
heart of God's city burst a prodigious pillar of smoke and flame,
losing itself in the deep azure. Useless to add that this was the
trail of Ashmodai's precipitous fl

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