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and the old man said to them, ‘O elders of the fire, how blessed is this day!’ Then he cried out, saying, ‘Ho, Ghezban!’ Whereupon there came out to him a tall black slave of forbidding aspect, grim-visaged and flat-nosed. The old man made a sign to him, and he bound Asaad straitly; after which the old man said to him, ‘Bear him to the dungeon under the earth and bid my slave-girl Kewam torture him day and night and give him a cake of bread to eat morning and evening, against the time come of the voyage to the Blue Sea and the Mountain of Fire, when we will slaughter him on the mountain as a sacrifice.’ So the black carried him out at another door and raising a flag in the floor, discovered a flight of twenty steps leading to a chamber under the earth, into which he descended with him and laying his feet in irons, committed him to the slave-girl and went away. Meanwhile, the old men said to one another, ‘When the day of the Festival of the Fire comes, we will sacrifice him on the mountain, as a propitiatory offering to the Fire.’ Presently the damsel went down to him and beat him grievously, till the blood streamed from his sides and he fainted away; after which she set at his head a cake of bread and a cruse of brackish water and went away and left him. In the middle of the night, he revived and found himself bound and sore with beating: so he wept bitterly and Night ccxxviii.recalling his former estate of ease and honour and lordship and dominion, groaned and lamented and repeated the following verses:
Halt by the ruins of the house and question of our fate Nor think we sojourn in the land, as in our first estate.
Fortune, the sunderer, hath wrought the severance of our loves; Yet doth our enemies’ despite against us nought abate.
A filthy cockatrice is set to torture me with whips, Whose breast against me is fulfilled with rancour and with hate.
But haply God shall yet reknit our severed loves again And turn our enemies from us with vengeance stern and strait.
