Then said I, 'Tell me, O Genie! is the Identical subservient to me in
another head save thine?'

He answered, 'Nay I in another head 'tis a counteraction to the power of
the Ring, the Ring powerless over it.'

And I said, 'Must it live in a head, the Identical?'

Cried he, 'Woe to what else holdeth it!'

I whispered in his hairy pointed red ear, 'Sleep! sleep!' and lulled him
with a song, and he slept, being weary with my commissioning. Then I
bade Feshnavat, my father, fetch me one of my books of magic, and read in
it of the discovery of the Identical by means of the Ring; and I took the
Ring and hung it on a hair of my own head over the head of the Genie, and
saw one of the thin lengths begin to twist and dart and writhe, and shift
lustres as a creature in anguish. So I put the Ring on my forefinger,
and turned the hair round and round it, and tugged. Lo, with a noise
that stunned me, the hair came out! O my betrothed, what shrieks and
roars were those: with which the Genie awoke, finding himself bare of the
Identical! Oolb heard them, and the sea foamed like the mouth of
madness, as the Genie sped thunder-like over it, following me in mid-air.
Such a flight was that! Now, I found it not possible to hold the
Identical, for it twisted and stung, and was nigh slipping from me while
I flew. I saw white on a corner of the Desert, a city, and I descended
on it by the shop of a clothier that sat quietly by his goods and stuffs,
thinking of fate less than of kabobs and stews and rare seasonings. That
city hath now his name. Wullahy, had I not then sown in his head that
hair which he weareth yet, how had I escaped Karaz, and met thee?