faces to the ground; but Noorna watched the conflict eagerly, and saw the
head of Shagpat sprouting incessant fresh crops of hair, despite the
pertinacious shearing of her betrothed. Then she smote her hands, and
cried, 'Yea! though I lose my beauty and the love of my betrothed, I must
join in this, or he'll be lost.' So, saying to Abarak, 'Watch over me,'
she went into the air, and, as she passed Rabesqurat, was multiplied into
twenty damsels of loveliness. Then Abarak beheld a scorpion following the
twenty in mid-air, and darting stings among them. Noorna tossed a ring,
and it fell in a circle of flame round the scorpion. So, while the
scorpion was shooting in squares to escape from the circle, the
fire-beaked vulture flew to it, and fluttered a dense rain which
swallowed the flame, and the scorpion and vulture assailed Noorna, that
was changed to a golden hawk in the midst of nineteen other golden hawks.
Now, as Rabesqurat came scudding by, and saw the encounter, she made the
twenty hawks a hundred. The Genie Karaz howled at her, and pinioned her
to a pillar below in the Desert, with Shagpat in her arms. But, as he
soared aloft to renew the fight with Noorna, Shibli Bagarag loosed to her
aid the Slaves of the Sword, and Abarak marked him slope to a distant
corner of earth, and reascend in a cloud, which drew swiftly over the
land toward the Great Hall. Lo, Shibli Bagarag stepped from it through a
casement of the Hall, and with him Shagpat, a slack weight, mated out of
all power of motion. Koorookh swooped low, on his back Baba Mustapha, and
Shibli Bagarag flung Abarak beside him on the bird. Then Koorookh whirred
off with them; and while the heavens raged, Shibli Bagarag prepared a
rapid lather, and dashed it over Shagpat, and commenced shearing him with
lightning sweeps of the blade. 'Twas as a racing wheel of fire to see
him! Suddenly he desisted, and wiped the sweat from his face. Then
calling on the name of Allah, he gave a last keen cunning sweep with the
blade, and following that, the earth awfully quaked and groaned, as if
speaking in the abysmal tongue the Mastery of the Event to all men. Aklis
was revealed in burning beams as of a sun, and the trouble of the air
ceased, vapours slowly curling to the four quarters. Shibli Bagarag had
smitten clean through the Identical! Terribly had Noorna and those that
aided her been oppressed by the multitude of their enemies; but, in a
moment these melted away, and Karaz, to