musk-ball in his fingers, and aimed at the fetlock of the
Horse Garraveen, and flung it, and struck him so that he stumbled and
fell. He snorted fiercely as he bent to the grass, but Shibli Bagarag
ran to him, and grasped strongly the tuft of hair hanging forward between
his ears, and traced between his fine eyes a figure of the crescent with
his forenail, and the Horse ceased plunging, and was gentle as a colt by
its mother's side, and suffered Shibli Bagarag to bestride him, and spurn
him with his heel to speed, and bore him fleetly across the fair length
of the golden meadows to where Noorna bin Noorka sat awaiting him. She
uttered a cry of welcome, saying, 'This is achieved with diligence and
skill, O my betrothed! and on thy right wrist I mark strength like a
sleeping leopard, and the children of Aklis will not resist thee.'

So she bade him alight from the Horse, but he said, 'Nay.' And she called
to him again to alight, but he cried, 'I will not alight from him! By
Allah! such a bounding wave of bliss have I never yet had beneath me, and
I will give him rein once again; as the poet says:

"Divinely rings the rushing air
When I am on my mettled mare:
When fast along the plains we fly,
A creature of the heavens am I"'

Then she levelled her brows at him, and said gravely, 'This is the
temptation thou art falling into, as have thousands before thy time.
Give him the rein a second time, and he will bear thee to the red pit,
and halt upon the brink, and pitch thee into it among bleeding masses and
skeletons of thy kind, where they lie who were men like to thee, and were
borne away by the Horse Garraveen.'