ing cloud. And she said, 'Ask not for the interpretation of
wonders in this sea, for they cluster like dates on a date branch.
Surely, to be with me is enough?'

And she bewitched him in the midst of the waters, making him oblivious of
all save her, so that he hugged the golden net of her smiles and fair
flatteries, and swam with an exulting stroke, giving his breast broadly
to the low billows, and shouting verses of love and delight to her. And
while they swam sweetly, behold, there was seen a pearly shell of
flashing crimson, amethyst, and emerald, that came scudding over the
waves toward them, raised to the wind, fan-shaped, and in its front two
silver seats. When she saw it, Noorna cried, 'She has sent me this,
Rabesqurat! Perchance is she favourable to my wishes, and this were
well!'

Then she swayed in the water sideways, and drew the shell to her, and the
twain climbed into it, and sat each on one of the silver seats, folded
together. In its lightness it was as a foam-bubble before the wind on the
blue water, and bore them onward airily. At his feet Shibli Bagarag
beheld a stool of carved topaz, and above his head the arch of the shell
was inlaid with wreaths of gems: never was vessel fairer than that.

Now, while they were speeding over the water, Noorna said, 'The end of
this fair sea is Aklis, and beyond it is the Koosh. So while the wind is
our helmsman, and we go circled by the quiet of this sea, I'll tell thee
of myself, if thou carest to hear.'

And he cried with the ardour of love, 'Surely, I would hear of nought
save thyself, Noorna, and the music of the happy garden compareth not in
sweetness with it. I long for the freshness of thy voice, as the desert
camel for the green spring, O my betrothed!'

So she said, 'And now give ear to the following':--

AND THIS IS THE STORY OF NOORNA BIN NOORKA, THE GENIE KARAZ, AND THE
PRINCESS OF OOLB

Know, that when I was a babe, I lay on my mother's bosom in the
wilderness, and it was the bosom of death. Surely, I slept and smiled,
and dreamed the infant's dream, and knew not the coldness of the thing I
touched. So were we even as two dead creatures lying there; but life was
in me, and I awoke with hunger at the time of feeding, and turned to my
mother, and put up my little mouth to her for nourishment, and sucked
her, but nothing came. I cried, and commenced chiding her, and after a
while it was as decreed, that certain horsemen of a troop passing throu