pitched on the very edge of the precipice. After keeping several vigils
there, he was accosted one night by the voice of the giaour, who amid
the darkness caused by a total eclipse of the moon and the stars,
offered to bring him to the palace of subterranean fire, where he should
behold the treasures which the stars had promised him, and the talismans
that control the world, if he would abjure Mohammed, adore the
terrestrial influences, and satiate the stranger's thirst with the blood
of fifty of the most beautiful Samarahite boys.

The unhappy caliph lavished his promises in the utmost profusion, and by
arranging for the celebration near the chasm of some juvenile sports,
which were not concluded till twilight, was able to make the direful
libation. As the boys came up one by one to receive their prizes, he
pushed them into the gulf, the dreadful device being executed with so
much dexterity that the boy who was approaching him remained unconscious
of the fate of his forerunner.

The popular tumult roused by this atrocity having been appeased by the
princess, who possessed the most consummate skill in the art of
persuasion, there was offered on the tower a burnt sacrifice to the
infernal deities, the main ingredients of which were mummies,
rhinoceros' horns, oil of the most venomous serpents, various aromatic
woods, and one hundred and forty of the caliph's most faithful subjects.
These preliminaries having been settled, a parchment was discovered, in
which Vathek was thanked for his burnt offering, and told to set forth
with a magnificent retinue for Istakar, where he would receive the
diadem of Gian Ben Gian, the talismans of Soliman, and the treasures of
the pre-Adamite sultans. But he was warned not to enter any dwelling on
his route.