sighs when she said: "There will no more come a time when I play with
my ball again, for now it is lost for ever."

And the gods tried to comfort Inzana as she played with her silver
moon, but she would not hear Them, and went in tears to Slid, where he
played with gleaming sails, and in his mighty treasury turned over gems
and pearls and lorded it over the sea. And she said: "O Slid, whose
soul is in the sea, bring back my golden ball."

And Slid stood up, swarthy, and clad in seaweed, and mightily dived
from the last chalcedony step out of Pegana's threshold straight into
ocean. There on the sand, among the battered navies of the nautilus and
broken weapons of the swordfish, hidden by dark water, he found the
golden ball. And coming up in the night, all green and dripping, he
carried it gleaming to the stairway of the gods and brought it back to
Inzana from the sea; and out of the hands of Slid she took it and
tossed it far and wide over his sails and sea, and far away it shone on
lands that knew not Slid, till it came to its zenith and dropped
towards the world.

But ere it fell the Eclipse dashed out from his hiding, and rushed at
the golden ball and seized it in his jaws. When Inzana saw the Eclipse
bearing her plaything away she cried aloud to the thunder, who burst
from Pegana and fell howling upon the throat of the Eclipse, who
dropped the golden ball and let it fall towards earth. But the black
mountains disguised themselves with snow, and as the golden ball fell
down towards them they turned their peaks to ruby crimson and their
lakes to sapphires gleaming amongst silver, and Inzana saw a jewelled
casket into which her plaything fell. But when she stooped to pick it
up again she found no jewelled casket with rubies, silver or sapphires,