fled! Like a cloud melting in air, or a ghost vanishing into the
nether-world, he had mysteriously disappeared! ... he had escaped,
no one knew how, from under the very feet and out of the very
grasp of the irate monarch, whose baffled wrath now knew no
bounds.

"Dolts, idiots, cowards!".. and he hurled these epithets at the
timorous crowd with all the ferocity of a giant hurling stones at
a swarm of pigmies.. "Babes that are frighted by a summer thunder-
storm! ... Ye have let yon accursed heretic slip from my hands ere
I had choked him with his own lie! O ye fools! Ye puny villains!
... I take shame to myself that I am King of such a race of
weaklings! Lights! ... Bring lights hither, ye whimpering slaves,
--ye shivering poltroons! ... What! call yourselves men! Nay, ye
are feeble girls prankt out in men's attire, and your steel
corselets cover the faintest hearts that ever failed for dastard
fear! Shut fast the palace-gates! ... close every barrier! ...
search every court and corner, lest haply this base false Prophet
be still here in hiding,--he that blasphemed with ribald tongue
the High Priestess of our Faith, the holy Virgin Lysia! ... Are ye
all turned renegades and traitors that ye will suffer him to go
free and triumph in his lawless heresy? Ye shameless knaves! Ye
milk-veined rascals! ... What abject terror makes ye thus quiver
like aspen-leaves in a storm? ... this darkness is but a
conjurer's trick to scare women, and Khosrul's followers can so
play with the strings of electricity that ye are duped into
accepting the witch-glamour as Heaven's own cloud-flame! By the
gods! If Al-Kyris falls, as yon dotard pronounceth, her ruins
shall bury but few heroes! O superstitious and degraded souls! ...
I would ye were even as I am--a man dauntless,--a soldier