Surely the world darkened before the eyes of Mashalleed, and he arose and called to his guard hoarsely, ‘Have off their heads!’ They hesitated, dreading the Queen, and he roared, ‘Slay them!’

Bhanavar beheld the winking of the steel, but ere the scimitars descended, she seized Ruark, and they stood in a whizzing ring of serpents, the sound of whom was as the hum of a thousand wires struck by storm-winds.  Then she glowed, towering over them with the Chief clasped to her, and crying: 

     King of vileness! match thy slaves
     With my creatures of the caves.

And she sang to the Serpents: 

     Seize upon him! sting him thro’! 
     Thrice this day shall pay your due.

But they, instead of obeying her injunction, made narrower their circle round Bhanavar and the Chief.  She yellowed, and took hold of the nearest Serpent horribly, crying: 

        Dare against me to rebel,
        Ye, the bitter brood of hell?

And the Serpent gasped in reply: 

        One the kiss to us secures: 
        Give us ours, and we are yours.

Thereupon another of the Serpents swung on, the feet of Ruark, winding his length upward round the body of the Chief; so she tugged at that one, tearing it from him violently, and crying: 

        Him ye shall not have, I swear! 
        Seize the King that’s crouching there.

And that Serpent hissed: 

        This is he the kiss ensures: 
        Give us ours, and we are yours.

Another and another Serpent she flung from the Chief, and they began to swarm venomously, answering her no more.  Then Ruark bore witness to his faith, and folded his arms with the grave smile she had known in the desert; and Bhanavar struggled and tussled with the Serpents in fierceness, strangling and tossing them to right and left.  ’Great is Allah!’ cried all present, and the King trembled, for never was sight like that seen, the hall flashing with the Serpents, and a woman-serpent, their Queen, raging to save one from their fury, shrieking at intervals: 

        Never, never shall ye fold,
        Save with me the man I hold.

But now the hiss and scream of the Serpents and the noise of their circling was quickened to a slurred savage sound and they closed on Ruark, and she felt him stifling and that they were relentless.  So in the height of the tempest Bhanavar seized the Jewel in the gold circlet on her brow and cast it from her.  Lo! the Serpents instantly abated their frenzy, and flew all of them to pluck the Jewel, chasing the one that had it in his fangs through the casement, and the hall breathed empty of them.  Then in the silence that was, Bhanavar veiled her face and said to the Chief, ’Pass from the hall while they yet dread me.  No longer am I Queen of Serpents.’

But he replied, ‘Nay! said I not my soul is thine?’

She cried to him, ’Seest thou not the change in me?  I was bound to those Serpents for my beauty, and ’tis gone!  Now am I powerless, hateful to look on, O Ruark my Chief!’