he looked very angry.
He will bring us the swords of the slave-guard. We must prostrate
ourselves before him and kiss his feet or he will be angry with us
too.

OLD SLAVE Will Argimenes give me a sword?

ZARB He will have swords for six of us if he slays the slave-guard.
Yes, he will give you a sword.

SLAVE A sword! No, no, I must not; the King would kill me if he found
that I had a sword.

SECOND SLAVE (slowly, as one who develops an idea) If the King found
that I had a sword, why then it would be an evil day for the King.
(They all look off left.)

ZARB I think that they are playing at dice again.

FIRST SLAVE I do not see Argimenes.

ZARB No, because he was crouching as he walked. The slave-guard is on
the sky-line.

SECOND SLAVE What is that dark shadow behind the slave-guard?

ZARB It is too still to be Argimenes.

SECOND SLAVE Look! It moves.

ZARB The evening is too dark, I cannot see. (They continue to gaze
into the gathering darkness. They raise themselves on their knees and
crane their necks. Nobody speaks. Then from their lips and from others
further off goes up a long deep Oh! It is like the sound that goes up
from the grand stand when a horse falls at a fence, or in England like
the first exclamation of the crowd at a great cricket match when a man
is caught in the slips.)

THE FALL OF BABBULKUND

I said: 'I will arise now and see Babbulkund, City of Marvel. She is
of one age with the earth; the stars are her sisters. Pharaohs of
the old time coming conquering from Araby first saw her, a solitary
mountain in the desert, and cut the mountain into towers and terraces.
They destroyed one of the hills of God, but they made Babbulkund. She
is carven, not built; her palaces are one with her terraces, there is
neither join nor cleft. Hers is the beauty of the youth of the world.
She deemeth herself to be the middle of Earth, and hath four gates
facing outward to the Nations. There sits outside her eastern gate a
colossal god of stone. His face flushes with the lights of dawn. When
the morning sunlight warms his lips they part a little, and he giveth
utterance to the words 'Oon Oom,' and the language is long since dead
in which he speaks, and all his worshippers are gathered to their
tombs, so that none knoweth what the words portend that he uttereth at
dawn. Some say that he greets the sun as one god greets another in the
language thereof, and others say that he proclaims the day, and o