"The cunning of our oft-neglected wit
Doth best the keyhole of occasion fit";

and whoso looketh for help from others looketh the wrong way in an
undertaking. Wah! I will be bold and batter at the hundredth door, which
is the door of the Sword.' So he advanced straightway to the door, which
was one of solid silver, charactered with silver letters, and knocked
against it three knocks; and a voice within said, 'What spells?'

He answered, 'Paravid; Garraveen; and the Lily of the Sea!'

Upon that the voice said, 'Enter by virtue of the spells!' and the silver
door swung open, discovering a deep pit, lightened by a torch, and across
it, bridging it, a string of enormous eggs, rocs' eggs, hollowed, and so
large that a man might walk through them without stooping. At the side
of each egg three lamps were suspended from a claw, and the shell passage
was illumined with them from end to end. Shibli Bagarag thought, 'These
eggs are of a surety the eggs of the Roc mastered by Aklis with his
sword!' Now, as the sight of Shibli Bagarag grew familiar to the place,
he beheld at the bottom of the pit a fluttering mass of blackness and two
sickly eyes that glittered below.

Then thought he, 'Wah! if that be the Roc, and it not dead, will the bird
suffer one to defile its eggs with other than the sole of the foot,
naked?' He undid his sandals and kicked off the slippers given him by
the damsels that had duped him, and went into the first egg over the
abyss, and into the second, and into the third, and into the fourth, and
into the fifth. Surely the eggs swung with him, and bent; and the fear
of their breaking and he falling into the maw of the terrible bird made
him walk unevenly. When he had come to the seventh egg, which was the