Part 23 (1/2)

The mouth of this cavern was the already mentioned tunnel whose farthest exit debouched upon the valley of Seleucia, half a league from the sea--that waste, barren, and savage valley.

The Omarites moved to and fro in the black cave without a torch, like the blind, who do not go astray in the turnings and windings of the streets, although they see them not. The sleepers had drunk a magic potion, which did not permit them to awake for some time, and the men carried them on their shoulders to the opposite entrance of the cavern and there laid them down on the moss, in a place where the sunlight was wont to penetrate.

It was already late in the day when the two children awoke. As soon as they had opened their eyes, their first care was to kiss and embrace each other. Then they aroused the merchant also and, rubbing sleep out of their eyes, began to tell him, in childish fas.h.i.+on, what they had been dreaming about.

”Ah! what a lovely dream I had!” cried Thomar, and even now his eyes sparkled. ”I was standing beside the Sultan, who was leaning on my shoulder. Before me and around me howled a rebellious mult.i.tude, and the Sultan was pale and sad. Turning towards me he sighed, 'Wherewith shall I appease this raging sea?' For a long time I could find no answer. It was as if something were weighing me down, something as heavy as a mountain, when suddenly the words escaped from my lips, 'With swords, with guns, with weapons!' And then the Padishah girded his own sword upon me, and I rushed among the howling mob, and I cut and hacked away at them till they were all consumed, and at last a field that had been reaped lay before me, and it was covered with nothing but corpses.”

”That is a foolish dream,” said Leonidas. ”Why did you eat so much last night?”

And now Milieva told her dream.

”I also must have been confused by the wine. Before me also a rebellious mult.i.tude appeared, and it then seemed to me as if I was not a girl but a boy. Furiously they rushed upon me from every side, but I feared them not, and when they were quite near to me I cried out to them, 'Down on your knees before me! I am the Sultan's daughter!'

And everything was instantly quiet.”

The merchant laughed till he choked at this dream. Who but children could dream such rubbish?

”But at home they used to say,” observed Thomar, with a grave face, ”that whatever any one dreams in a strange place where he has never slept before, he will see that dream accomplished.”

”Well, I am much obliged to you,” said the merchant, ”for in my dream I was hanging up in Salonika by my feet, with my head downwards.”

Then the merchant made the children leave the cavern.

”Come, my children,” said he, ”let us see if the sea has calmed down, and whether a s.h.i.+p is approaching from anywhere.”

Thomar obeyed, quitted the cavern, and exclaimed, in astonishment:

”Look, my dear foster-father! How could a s.h.i.+p come here when the very sea has vanished, and only the bottom of it remains.”

And indeed the district stretching out before them was quite bare and barren enough to be taken for the bottom of the sea.

Leonidas took the lad's words for a joke, and it was a joke he did not relish.

”Keep your witticisms for another time, my son,” said he, ”and rub your eyes that they may see the better.”

But Milieva leaped after Thomar, and when she had got up to him she clapped her hands together, and exclaimed, with nave amazement:

”Why, the sea has run away from us!”

And now the merchant himself arose from his place, went out of the cavern, and could scarce believe his eyes when he saw before him the savage, rocky region, where not a drop of moisture could be seen, to say nothing of the sea!

”G.o.d has worked wonders for us,” sighed the merchant. ”It is plain that we are in quite a different place from that wherein we went to sleep.”

”No doubt the peris of the mountains of Kaf have conveyed us. .h.i.ther,”

said Milieva.

”Peris, no doubt,” observed Leonidas, absently, groping for his long reticule, and feeling whether his diamonds were still there. If it were not peris, they would certainly have searched him for his diamonds.

And now they had to find out where they were, and what was the best way to get out of the wilderness. The greatest anxiety had disappeared; they had no longer anything to fear from the sea. On dry land it would be much easier to find a place of refuge.