hem the single blaze became two fires; and drawing
nigh, Shibli Bagarag beheld them what they were, angry eyes in the head
of a great lion, a model of majesty, and passion was in his mane and
power was in his forepaws; so while he lashed his tail as a tempest
whippeth the tawny billows at night, and was lifting himself for a roar,
she said, 'A hair of Garraveen, and touch him with it!'
Shibli Bagarag pushed up his sleeve and broke one of the three sapphire
hairs and stepped forward to the lion, holding in his right hand the hair
of vivid light. The lion crouched, and was in the vigour of the spring
when that hair touched him, and he trembled, tumbling on his knees and
letting the twain pass. So they advanced beyond him, and lo! the Cave of
Chrysolites irradiate with beams, breaks of brilliance, confluences of
lively hues, restless rays, meeting, vanishing, flooding splendours, now
scattered in dazzling joints and spars, now uniting in momentary disks of
radiance. In the centre of the cave glowed a furnace, and round it he
distinguished the seven youths, swarthier and sterner than before, dark
sweat standing on the brows of each. Their words were brief, and they
wore each a terrible frown, saying to him, without further salutation,
'Thrust in the flame of this furnace thy right wrist.'
At the same moment, the Antelope said in his ear, 'Do thou their bidding,
and be not backward! In Aklis fear is ruin, and hesitation a destroyer.'
He fixed his mind on the devotedness of Noorna, and held his nether lip
tightly between his teeth, and thrust his right wrist in the flame of the
furnace. The wrist reddened, and became transparent with heat, but he
felt no pain, only that his whole arm was thrice its natural weight. Then
the flame of the furnace fell, and the seven youths made him kneel by a
brook of golden waters and dip his forehead up to his eyes in the waters.
Then they took him to the other side of the cave, and his sight was
strengthened to mark the glory of the Sword, where it hung in slings, a
little way from the wall, outshining the lights of the cave, and throwing
them back with its superior force and stedfastness of lustre. Lo! the
length of it was as the length of crimson across the sea when the sun is
sideways on the wave, and it seemed full a mile long, the whole blade
sheening like an arrested lightning from the end to the hilt; the hilt
two large live serpents twined together, with eyes like sombre jewels,
a
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