He promised her, and they lay and slept.  When he awoke the sun was half-risen, and he looked at Noorna bin Noorka in the silken bag, and she was yet in the peacefulness of pleasant dreams; but for the Ass, surely his eyes rolled, and his head and fore legs were endued with life, while his latter half seemed of stone.  And the youth called to Noorna bin Noorka, and pointed to her the strangeness of the condition of the Ass.  As she cast eyes on him she cried out, and rushed to him, and took him by the ears and blew up his nostrils, and the animal was quiet.  Then she and Shibli Bagarag mounted him again, and she said to him, ’It is well thou wert more vigilant than I, and that the sun rose not on this Ass while I slept, or my enchantment would have thawed on him, and he would have ‘scaped us.’

She gave her heel to the Ass, and the Ass hung his tail in sullenness and drooped his head; and she laughed, crying, ’Karaz, silly fellow! do thy work willingly, and take wisely thine outwitting.’

She jeered him as they journeyed, and made the soul of Shibli Bagarag merry, so that he jerked in his seat upon the Ass.  Now, as they ascended the mountain they came to the opening of a cavern, and Noorna bin Noorka halted the Ass, and said to Shibli Bagarag, ’We part here, and I wait for thee in this place.  Take this phial, and fill it with the waters of the well, after thy bath.  The way is before thee—­speed on it.’

He climbed the sides of the mountain, and was soon hidden in the clefts and beyond the perches of the vulture.  She kept her eyes on the rocky point when he disappeared, awaiting his return; and the sun went over her head and sank on the yon-side of the mountain, and it was by the beams of the moon that she beheld Shibli Bagarag dropping from the crags and ledges of rock, sliding and steadying himself downward till he reached her with the phial in his hand, filled; and he was radiant, as it were divine with freshness, so that Noorna, before she spoke welcome to him, was lost in contemplating the warm shine of his visage, calling to mind the poet’s words: 

The wealth of light in sun and moon,
All nature’s wealth,
Hath mortal beauty for a boon
When match’d with health.

Then said she, ’O Shibli Bagarag, ’tis achieved, this first of thy tasks; for mutely on the fresh red of thy mouth, my betrothed, speaketh the honey of persuasiveness, and the children of Aklis will not resist thee.’  So she took the phial from him and led forth the Ass, and the twain mounted the Ass and descended the slopes of the mountain in moonlight; and Shibli Bagarag said, ’Lo!  I have marked wonders, and lived a life since our parting; and this well, ’tis a miracle to dip in it, and by it sit many maidens weeping and old men babbling, and youths that were idle youths striking bubbles from the surface of the water.  The well is rounded with marble, and the sky is clear in it, cool in it, the whole earth imaged therein.’