ers of brooks and broad rivers flashed
like waving mirrors waved by the slave-girls in sport when the beauties
of the harem riot and dip their gleaming shoulders in the bath. He
wandered on, lost in the gladness that lived, till the loud neigh of a
steed startled him, and by the banks of a river before him he beheld the
Horse Garraveen stooping to drink of the river; glorious was the look of
the creature,--silver-hoofed, fashioned in the curves of beauty and
swiftness. So Shibli Bagarag put up his two hands and blew the call of
battle, and the Horse Garraveen arched his neck at the call, and swung
upon his haunches, and sought the call, answering it, and tossing his
mane as he advanced swiftly. Then, as he neared, Shibli Bagarag held the
musk-ball in his fingers, and aimed at the fetlock of the Horse
Garraveen, and flung it, and struck him so that he stumbled and fell. He
snorted fiercely as he bent to the grass, but Shibli Bagarag ran to him,
and grasped strongly the tuft of hair hanging forward between his ears,
and traced between his fine eyes a figure of the crescent with his
forenail, and the Horse ceased plunging, and was gentle as a colt by its
mother's side, and suffered Shibli Bagarag to bestride him, and spurn him
with his heel to speed, and bore him fleetly across the fair length of
the golden meadows to where Noorna bin Noorka sat awaiting him. She
uttered a cry of welcome, saying, 'This is achieved with diligence and
skill, O my betrothed! and on thy right wrist I mark strength like a
sleeping leopard, and the children of Aklis will not resist thee.'

So she bade him alight from the Horse, but he said, 'Nay.' And she called
to him again to alight, but he cried, 'I will not alight from him! By
Allah! such a bounding wave of bliss have I never yet had beneath me, and
I will give him rein once again; as the poet says:

"Divinely rings the rushing air
When I am on my mettled mare:
When fast along the plains we fly,
A creature of the heavens am I."

Then she levelled her brows at him, and said gravely, 'This is the
temptation thou art falling into, as have thousands before thy time. Give
him the rein a second time, and he will bear thee to the red pit, and
halt upon the brink, and pitch thee into it among bleeding masses and
skeletons of thy kind, where they lie who were men like to thee, and were
borne away by the Horse Garraveen.'

He gave no heed to her words, taunting her,