of the crash.

Take colours of whichever side thou wilt,
And stedfastly thyself in battle range;
Yet, having taken, shouldst thou dare to change,
Suspicion hunts thee as a thing of guilt.

Baba Mustapha, was pronounced Sovereign of Oolb, amid the acclamations of
the guard encamped under the command of Ravaloke, without the walls.

No less did Shibli Bagarag honour the benefactor of Noorna, making him
chief of his armies; and he, with his own hand, bestowed on the good old
warrior the dress of honour presented to him by the Seven Sons,
charactered with all the mysteries of Aklis, a marvel lost to men in the
failure to master the Illusion now dominating earth.

So, then, of all that had worshipped Shagpat, only Kadza clung to him,
and she departed with him into the realms of Rabesqurat, who reigned
there, divided against herself by the stroke of the Sword. The Queen is
no longer mighty, for the widening of her power has weakened it, she
being now the mistress of the single-thoughted, and them that follow one
idea to the exclusion of a second. The failure in the unveiling of her
last-cherished Illusion was in the succumbing frailty of him that
undertook the task, the world and its wise men having come to the belief
that in thwackings there was ignominy to the soul of man, and a tarnish
on the lustre of heroes. On that score, hear the words of the poet, a
vain protest:

Ye that nourish hopes of fame!
Ye who would be known in song!
Ponder old history, and duly frame
Your souls to meek acceptance of the thong.

Lo! of hundreds who aspire,
Eighties perish-nineties tire!
They who bear up, in spite of wrecks and wracks,
Were season 'd by celestial hail of thwacks.

Fortune in this mortal race
Builds on thwackings for its base;
Thus the All-Wise doth make a flail a staff,
And separates his heavenly corn from chaff.

Think ye, had he never known
Noorna a belabouring crone,
Shibli Bagarag would have shaved Shagpat
The unthwack'd lives in chronicle a rat!

'Tis the thwacking in this den
Maketh lions of true men!
So are we nerved to break the clinging mesh
Which tames the noblest efforts of poor flesh.

Feshnavat became the Master's Vizier, and Abarak remained at the right
hand of Shibli Bagarag, his slave in great adventure. No other condition
than bondage gave peac