I am a bad sleeper at the best of times, and my dreams that night when at last I got to rest were not of the pleasantest.  The awful vision of poor Mahomed struggling to escape the red-hot pot would haunt them, and then in the background, as it were, a veiled form was always hovering, which, from time to time, seemed to draw the coverings from its body, revealing now the perfect shape of a lovely blooming woman, and now again the white bones of a grinning skeleton, and which, as it veiled and unveiled, uttered the mysterious and apparently meaningless sentence:—­

“That which is alive and hath known death, and that which is dead yet can never die, for in the Circle of the Spirit life is naught and death is naught.  Yea, all things live for ever, though at times they sleep and are forgotten.”

The morning came at last, but when it came I found that I was too stiff and sore to rise.  About seven Job arrived, limping terribly, and with his face the colour of a rotten apple, and told me that Leo had slept fairly, but was very weak.  Two hours afterwards Billali (Job called him “Billy-goat,” to which, indeed, his white beard gave him some resemblance, or more familiarly, “Billy”) came too, bearing a lamp in his hand, his towering form reaching nearly to the roof of the little chamber.  I pretended to be asleep, and through the cracks of my eyelids watched his sardonic but handsome old face.  He fixed his hawk-like eyes upon me, and stroked his glorious white beard, which, by the way, would have been worthy a hundred a year to any London barber as an advertisement.

“Ah!” I heard him mutter (Billali had a habit of muttering to himself), “he is ugly—­ugly as the other is beautiful—­a very Baboon, it was a good name.  But I like the man.  Strange now, at my age, that I should like a man.  What says the proverb—­’Mistrust all men, and slay him whom thou mistrustest overmuch; and as for women, flee from them, for they are evil, and in the end will destroy thee.’  It is a good proverb, especially the last part of it:  I think that it must have come down from the ancients.  Nevertheless I like this Baboon, and I wonder where they taught him his tricks, and I trust that She will not bewitch him.  Poor Baboon! he must be wearied after that fight.  I will go lest I should awake him.”

I waited till he had turned and was nearly through the entrance, walking softly on tiptoe, and then I called after him.

“My father,” I said, “is it thou?”

“Yes, my son, it is I; but let me not disturb thee.  I did but come to see how thou didst fare, and to tell thee that those who would have slain thee, my Baboon, are by now far on their road to She. She said that ye also were to come at once, but I fear ye cannot yet.”

“Nay,” I said, “not till we have recovered a little; but have me borne out into the daylight, I pray thee, my father.  I love not this place.”