Ghul then gives him a rod, saying, “Throw it down, and walk after it.  It will knock at the garden gate, which will open, and when you enter you will find great dogs, but throw the bread right and left, without looking back.  Beyond a second gate you will find Ghuls; throw bread to them right and left, and after passing them, look up, and you will find a tree in a fountain surrounded with roses and jasmine.  You will see a pomegranate upon it.  Gather it, and it will thunder, but fear nothing, and go on your way directly, and do not look behind you after passing the gate.”  The queen waits another fortnight, and then demands the flying castle from Mount Kaf, intending that her father, who dwelt there, should burn him.  The Ghuleh directed Mohammed to dye himself black, and to provide himself with some mastic (ladin) and lupines.  With these, he makes friends with a black slave, who takes him into the castle, and shows him a bottle containing the life of the queen, another containing the eyes of the forty women; a magic sword which spares nothing, and the ring which moves the castle.  Mohammed then sees a beetle,[FN#441] which the slave begs him not to kill, as it is his life.  He watches it till it enters a hole, and as soon as the slave is asleep, he kills it, and the slave dies.  Then he lays hands on the talismans, rushes into the room where the inhabitants of the castle are condoling with the king and queen on the loss of their three children, and draws the sword, saying “Strike right and left, and spare neither great nor small.”  Having slain all in the castle, Mohammed removes it to his father’s palace, when his father orders the cannons to be fired.  Then Mohammed tells his father his history, compels the queen to restore the eyes of the forty women, when they become prettier than before, and then gives her the flask containing her life.  But she drops it in her fright, and her life ends, and the king places Mohammed on the throne.

III.—­Histoire de la Dame des Arabes Jasmin.

A king sends his wazir to obtain a talisman of good luck, which is written for him by Jasmine, the daughter of an Arab Sheikh.  The king marries her, although she demands to be weighed against gold, but drives her away for kissing a fisherman in return for a bottle which he has drawn out of the river for her.  She goes two days’ journey to a town, where she takes up her abode with a merchant, and then discovers that whenever she turns the stopper of the bottle, food, drink, and finally ten white dancing girls emerge from it.  The girls dance, each throws her ten purses of money, and then they retire into the bottle.  She builds herself a grand palace, where her husband seeks her, and seeing the new palace, orders that no lights shall be lit in the town that night.  She lights up her palace, which convinces the king that he has a dangerous rival.  Then the wazir and the king visit her; the king asks for the bottle, and she demands more than a kiss, then reveals herself, puts the king to shame, and they are reconciled.