Vathek would have followed the perfidious giaour had not an invisible agency arrested his progress and that of the multitude; and he was so much struck by the whole circumstance that he ordered his tents to be pitched on the very edge of the precipice.  After keeping several vigils there, he was accosted one night by the voice of the giaour, who amid the darkness caused by a total eclipse of the moon and the stars, offered to bring him to the palace of subterranean fire, where he should behold the treasures which the stars had promised him, and the talismans that control the world, if he would abjure Mohammed, adore the terrestrial influences, and satiate the stranger’s thirst with the blood of fifty of the most beautiful Samarahite boys.

The unhappy caliph lavished his promises in the utmost profusion, and by arranging for the celebration near the chasm of some juvenile sports, which were not concluded till twilight, was able to make the direful libation.  As the boys came up one by one to receive their prizes, he pushed them into the gulf, the dreadful device being executed with so much dexterity that the boy who was approaching him remained unconscious of the fate of his forerunner.

The popular tumult roused by this atrocity having been appeased by the princess, who possessed the most consummate skill in the art of persuasion, there was offered on the tower a burnt sacrifice to the infernal deities, the main ingredients of which were mummies, rhinoceros’ horns, oil of the most venomous serpents, various aromatic woods, and one hundred and forty of the caliph’s most faithful subjects.  These preliminaries having been settled, a parchment was discovered, in which Vathek was thanked for his burnt offering, and told to set forth with a magnificent retinue for Istakar, where he would receive the diadem of Gian Ben Gian, the talismans of Soliman, and the treasures of the pre-Adamite sultans.  But he was warned not to enter any dwelling on his route.

Vathek and the cavalcade set out, and for three days all went well.  But on the fourth a storm burst upon them, the frightful roar of wild beasts resounded at a distance, and they soon perceived in the forest glaring eyes that could only belong to devils or tigers.  Fire destroyed their provisions, and they would have starved had not two dwarfs, who dwelt as hermits on the top of some rocks, received divine intimation of their plight and revealed it to their emir, Fakreddin.  The dwarfs were entertained, caressed, and seated with great ceremony on little cushions of state.  But they clambered up the sides of the caliph’s seat, and, placing themselves each on one of his shoulders, began to whisper prayers in his ears; and his patience was almost exhausted when the acclamations of the troops announced the approach of Fakreddin.  He hastened to their assistance, but being punctiliously religious and likewise a great dealer in compliments, he made an harangue five times more prolix and insipid than his harbingers had already delivered.