ape[FN#23] with hair like horses' tails and claws like lions'
claws, and both were big as great palm-trees. When they espied
this case, they exclaimed,, "There is no Majesty and there is no
Might save in Allah, the Glorious, the Great!" Now the cause of
this was that a certain King of the Kings of the Jinn, highs
Mura'ash, had a son called Sa'ik, who loved a damsel of the Jinn,
named Najmah;[FN#24] and the twain used to foregather in that
Wady under the sem blance of two birds. Gharib and Sahim saw them
thus and deeming them birds, shot at them with shafts but
wounding only Sa'ik whose blood flowed. Najmah mourned over him;
then, fearing lest the like calamity befal herself, snatched up
her lover and flew with him to his father's palace, where she
cast him down at the gate. The warders bore him in and laid him
before his sire who, seeing the pile sticking in his rib
exclaimed, "Alas, my son! Who hath done with thee this thing,
that I may lay waste his abiding-place and hurry on his
destruction, though he were the greatest of the Kings of the
Jann?" Thereupon Sa'ik opened his eyes and said, "O my father,
none slew me save a mortal in the Valley of Springs." Hardly had
he made an end of these words, when his soul departed; whereupon
his father buffeted his face, till the blood streamed from his
mouth, and cried out to two Marids, saying, "Hie ye to the Valley
of Springs and bring me all who are therein." So they betook
themselves to the Wady in question, where they found Gharib and
Sahim asleep, and, snatching them up, carried them to King
Mura'ash.[FN#25]--And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and
ceased saying her permitted say.

When it was the Six Hundred and Fifty-first Night,