colossal god of stone. His face flushes with the lights of dawn. When
the morning sunlight warms his lips they part a little, and he giveth
utterance to the words 'Oon Oom,' and the language is long since dead
in which he speaks, and all his worshippers are gathered to their
tombs, so that none knoweth what the words portend that he uttereth at
dawn. Some say that he greets the sun as one god greets another in the
language thereof, and others say that he proclaims the day, and others
that he uttereth warning. And at every gate is a marvel not credible
until beholden.'

And I gathered three friends and said to them: 'We are what we have
seen and known. Let us journey now and behold Babbulkund, that our
minds may be beautified with it and our spirits made holier.'

So we took ship and travelled over the lifting sea, and remembered not
things done in the towns we knew, but laid away the thoughts of them
like soiled linen and put them by, and dreamed of Babbulkund.

But when we came to the land of which Babbulkund is the abiding glory,
we hired a caravan of camels and Arab guides, and passed southwards
in the afternoon on the three days' journey through the desert that
should bring us to the white walls of Babbulkund. And the heat of
the sun shone upon us out of the bright grey sky, and the heat of the
desert beat up at us from below.

About sunset we halted and tethered our horses, while the Arabs
unloaded the provisions from the camels and prepared a fire out of
the dry scrub, for at sunset the heat of the desert departs from it
suddenly, like a bird. Then we saw a traveller approaching us on a
camel coming from the south. When he was come near we said to him: