(King Argimenes furtively uncovers the sword, he picks it up and grips it in his hand.)

ZARB Majesty! (King Argimenes crouches and steals away towards the slave-guard.)

ZARB (to the other slaves) Argimenes has found a terrible sword and has gone to slay the slave-guard.  It is not a common sword, it is some king’s sword.

AN OLD SLAVE Argimenes will be dreadfully flogged.  We shall hear him cry all night.  His cries will frighten us, and we shall not sleep.

ZARB No! no!  The guards flog poor slaves, but Argimenes had an angry look.  The guards will be afraid when they see him look so angry and see his terrible sword.  It was a huge sword, and he looked very angry.  He will bring us the swords of the slave-guard.  We must prostrate ourselves before him and kiss his feet or he will be angry with us too.

OLD SLAVE Will Argimenes give me a sword?

ZARB He will have swords for six of us if he slays the slave-guard. 
Yes, he will give you a sword.

SLAVE A sword!  No, no, I must not; the King would kill me if he found that I had a sword.

SECOND SLAVE (slowly, as one who develops an idea) If the King found that I had a sword, why then it would be an evil day for the King.  (They all look off left.)

ZARB I think that they are playing at dice again.

FIRST SLAVE I do not see Argimenes.

ZARB No, because he was crouching as he walked.  The slave-guard is on the sky-line.

SECOND SLAVE What is that dark shadow behind the slave-guard?

ZARB It is too still to be Argimenes.

SECOND SLAVE Look!  It moves.

ZARB The evening is too dark, I cannot see. (They continue to gaze into the gathering darkness.  They raise themselves on their knees and crane their necks.  Nobody speaks.  Then from their lips and from others further off goes up a long deep Oh!  It is like the sound that goes up from the grand stand when a horse falls at a fence, or in England like the first exclamation of the crowd at a great cricket match when a man is caught in the slips.)

THE FALL OF BABBULKUND

I said:  ’I will arise now and see Babbulkund, City of Marvel.  She is of one age with the earth; the stars are her sisters.  Pharaohs of the old time coming conquering from Araby first saw her, a solitary mountain in the desert, and cut the mountain into towers and terraces.  They destroyed one of the hills of God, but they made Babbulkund.  She is carven, not built; her palaces are one with her terraces, there is neither join nor cleft.  Hers is the beauty of the youth of the world.  She deemeth herself to be the middle of Earth, and hath four gates facing outward to the Nations.  There sits outside her eastern gate a colossal god of stone.  His face flushes with the lights of dawn.  When the morning sunlight warms his lips they part a little, and he giveth utterance to the words ‘Oon Oom,’ and the language is long since dead in which he speaks, and all his worshippers are gathered to their tombs, so that none knoweth what the words portend that he uttereth at dawn.  Some say that he greets the sun as one god greets another in the language thereof, and others say that he proclaims the day, and others that he uttereth warning.  And at every gate is a marvel not credible until beholden.’