“Avaunt! avaunt!”
At that moment the lightning struck one of the bastions, and shook the mountain to its very base. The crackling roar of the thunder, like an infernal trumpet-blast, went clanging up to heaven.
“Ah!” cried Azrael, and she sank down upon the Corsar, encircled his body with her arms, and so remained till the rumbling of the thunder had died away, and a gentle shower began to patter down upon the copper roof. Then the tempest gradually passed away, sighing and moaning around the windows, and finally dying away among the distant forests.
Azrael softly raised her head and looked around.
“He is gone,” she whispered, in a scarcely audible tone. “He said he would return in an hour. Corsar, thou hast yet another hour to live.”
“An hour!” repeated Corsar faintly. “Alas! Azrael, where canst thou conceal me?”
“It cannot be. Asasiel is inexorable. Another hour, and he will take thee away.”
“Bargain with him. If he must have the dead, I will behead a hundred of my slaves. Promise him blood, treasure, prayers, and burning villages. All, all he shall have, only let him give me back my life!”
“Too late. In my dreams I saw thy sword break in twain. Thy days are numbered. Nay, thou hast but one chance left, but one way of thwarting the Angel of Blood: if only one among the dead will change names with thee, so that Asasiel may carry him off instead of thee.”
“Oh yes! oh yes!” stammered the strong man, beside himself for fear. “Oh, seek me out some such dead man who will change names with me. Thou dost know the incantations. Go! call up one from the grave! Promise him anything, everything, whoever he may be—a fellah, a rajah, it matters not. I’ll give him my name and take his. Go!”
“Nay, but thou must go also. Gird on thy kaftan quickly. Leave thy weapons here. Spirits fear not sharp steel. We will descend into the churchyard beneath the fortress walls; kindle ambergris and borax on a tripod; hurl the magic wand into the nearest grave, and so compel the dwellers therein to appear before thee. When the spirit appears he will stand motionless, but thou must advance towards him, and cry thrice in a loud voice—‘Die for me!’ whereupon the spirit will vanish, and Asasiel will cease from troubling thee.”
“But thou too wilt be close at hand?” stammered the Corsar, grasping tightly the arm of the odalisque, as if he feared that Death would instantly seize him if he let her go.
“Yes, I will be by thy side. But hasten. An hour is but a brief respite.”
Corsar quickly threw his upper garment around him, and recited in broken sentences the beginning of a prayer, the end of which he could not recollect.
“Wake none of the watch,” said Azrael cautiously. “The power of the spell might be broken if we met any living soul who should say a prayer contrary to ours. We will saddle the horses ourselves and descend by secret paths. Speak not a word by the way, nor cast a glance behind thee.”
The Beg was ready. He was just putting on his fur-lined kaftan, for his limbs felt frozen, when the odalisque called to the panther, which was reposing on the carpet.
“Oglan,22 thou shalt go with us and keep watch, and if we fall in with a wild beast, thou shalt defend us.”
As if he understood the words of his mistress, the panther rose up on his hind legs and placed his forepaws on her arm, while the trembling man clung to her on the other side.
The Turkish cemetery beneath the walls of the fortress is planted with cypress trees. The turbaned graves, with their coffin-like slabs, peer forth, ghastly white, from among the dark weeping-willows. The sound of the approaching footsteps startles away a grey wolf from among the tombs, the sole inhabitant of that desolation. Since the last shower the clouds have dispersed, and here and there the dark-blue sky looks through with its diamond stars. Raindrops trickle down from the leaves of the trees.
From time to time the rumbling of the storm is still heard faintly in the distance. Sheet-lightning flickers above the mountain crests, painting everything white for an instant. The lightning, like the night, can only give one colour to this region—the one paints it white, the other black.
The nightly shapes reach the churchyard by the secret path and dismount among the graves. Azrael places the reins of both horses in Oglan’s jaws, and the shrewd beast remains sitting there on his haunches, holding both the snorting horses as firmly as if they were fastened to a stake.
The Moorish horseman and the odalisque ascend a high funereal mound, the tombstone of which is barely visible through the dependent branches of a weeping willow.
“Something more than a slave must rest beneath that stone,” whispered Azrael to the quaking horseman; and placing her magic tripod on the tomb, she ignited with a phosphorous pellet the powdered ambergris and borax, which flickered up and cast a whitish glare all around the grave.
There was a slight rustle in the distance. The Corsar’s horse neighed uneasily.
“What was that?” asked the Corsar.
“The Jinns,” replied Azrael; “look not behind thee.”
With that she raised her magic staff, and pronounced in unintelligible words the exorcism over the grave.
“Thou restless spirit, appear at my bidding. Wherever thou art, beneath the dark tree of Hell, or in the garden of the Houris; whether thou dost pine in chains of fire or dost recline on beds of roses, obey my voice, fly through the air, dissipate the darkness, and appear before me in the mortal shape thou didst wear on earth. Appear!”
With these words she struck with her staff upon the stone slab, and immediately a lofty shape in a white winding-sheet rose up from behind the tomb.
“Now advance three steps forward and speak to it,” cried Azrael to the confounded Moor.
With tottering footsteps Corsar Beg approached the shape, and
