Part 24 (1/2)
The Warrior Princess looked deep into his eyes and knew that he was speaking truth. Her heart was touched with compa.s.sion at the wrong he had suffered from his brothers, but she hid her feelings and questioned him further.
”Then it was you,” she said, ”who really took from me my glorious Nightingale Gisar?”
”Yes, Princess, it was. I crept past the lion and the wolf and the tiger just after midnight while they slept. I blew out the four candles at the head of your bed and lighted those at the foot. The golden cage of the Nightingale was hanging from a golden chain. Before I unfastened it I looked at you once, as you lay sleeping, and dared not look a second time.”
”Why not?” the Princess asked.
”Because, O Flower o' the World, you were so beautiful that I feared, were I to look again, I should forget the Nightingale Gisar and cry out in ecstacy.”
Then the compa.s.sion in the Princess's heart changed to love and she knew for a certainty that this was the man she was fated to wed.
She clapped her hands and when the guards came in she said to them:
”Call my warriors together that I may show them the Sultan's Youngest Son and the man who stole from me my glorious Nightingale Gisar and whom I am fated to wed.”
So the warriors came in until they crowded the tent to its utmost. Then the Princess stood up and took the Sultan's Youngest Son by the hand and presented him to the warriors and told them of his great bravery and courage and of all the perils he had endured in order to get the Nightingale Gisar for his father's mosque.
”He came to me now as a beggar,” she said, ”but I knew him at once for truth was in his mouth and courage in his eye. Behold, O warriors, your future lord!”
Then the warriors waved their swords and cried:
”Long live the Flower o' the World! Long live the Sultan's Youngest Son!”
All the Princess's army when they heard the news raised such a mighty shout that the people in the Sultan's city heard and were filled with dread not knowing what it meant. But soon they knew and then they, too, went mad with joy that what had threatened to be a war was turning to a wedding!
The Flower o' the World and her chief warriors and with them the Youngest Prince rode slowly to the city. The Prince was now dressed as befitted his rank and the Sultan when he saw him recognized him at once.
”Allah be praised!” he cried, ”my Youngest Son lives!”
Then they told him all--how it was this Prince and not the older brothers who had found the Nightingale Gisar and how the older brothers had robbed him of his prize and beaten him insensible.
When the Sultan heard how wicked his older sons had been his grief for their death was a.s.suaged.
”Allah be praised,” he said, ”that I have at least one son who is worthy!”
After the betrothal ceremony the Sultan and the Youngest Prince went to the mosque to pray. While they prayed the Nightingale sang so gloriously that it seemed to them they were no longer on earth but in Paradise.
When their prayers were finished and they were pa.s.sing out, the Dervish raised his sing-song voice and said:
”Now indeed is the Sultan's Mosque the most beautiful Mosque in the World for the Nightingale Gisar sings beside the Fountain!”
[Ill.u.s.tration]
THE GIRL IN THE CHEST
[Ill.u.s.tration]