The Thief of Bagdad. Achmed Abdullah

by pillars whose capitals were shaped into pendant lotus forms or crowned with fantastic, lateral struts carved into the likeness of horsemen or war-girt elephants.

      Finally he came to a great, oblong room. There was no furniture here except a tall incense burner on a twisted gold stand giving out spirals of scented, opalescent smoke, a number of large, iron-bound chests and boxes, and a profusion of silken pillows where three enormous palace eunuchs, dressed in yellow gauze that gave a generous glimpse of the brown flesh beneath, were snoring loud enough to rouse the dead.

      “By the itching of his palms as well as by the sight of the boxes, the Thief of Bagdad knew that he had arrived in the Caliph’s treasure chamber. And, while the three eunuchs continued to sleep the sleep of both the just and the unjust, he crept over to one of the chests; found it locked; found, furthermore, that the key to it was fastened so tightly to one of the eunuchs’ waist shawls that it was impossible to remove it; then, softly, slowly, inch by inch, he slid the chest along the floor until, without waking the sleeper, he was able to lift the key to the lock.

      He turned it. The lock opened. He raised the lid; looked; suppressed a cry of pleasurable excitement.

      For there, in a shimmering heap, were jewels from all the corners of Asia: jasper from the Punjaub, rubies from Burma, turquoises from Thibet, star-sapphires and alexandrites from Ceylon, flawless emeralds from Afghanistan, purple amethysts from Tartary, white crystal from Malwa, onyx from Persia, green jade and white jade from Amoy and from Turkestan, garnets from Bundelkhand, red corals from Socotra, pearls from Ramesvaram, lapis lazuli from Jaffra, yellow diamonds from Poonah, pink diamonds from Hydarabad, violet diamonds from Kafiristan, black, fire-veined agate from Dynbulpore.

      “If my breeches were only large enough to hold them all!” thought the Thief of Bagdad. “What shall I take first?”

      And he had just decided to start with a gorgeous string of evenly matched black pearls, had it already in his hand, when suddenly he sat up and listened. For, from not very far away, he heard the plaintive, minor cadences of a one-stringed Mongol lute; heard a high, soft voice lilting a Mongol song:

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      “In the pagoda of exquisite purity

       I hear each day the tinkle-tinkle

       Of my lost love's jade girdle gems.

       Looking from the carved' broad window

       Of the pagoda of exquisite purity,

       I see the unsullied waters of my grief

       Flow on in bleak undulation.

       I see a stray cloud of my Mongol home land

       Above the spire of the pagoda of exquisite purity,

       And the wild geese of Tartary flying over the river dunes …”