The Great Mogul

ere care i

s Faerie

We can but die with His praises on our lips; per

d fell to his feet. He lifted his hands to hide the anguish of eye and li

polished verse of Sa'adi were they not the outpouring of a despairing heart. Th

ravel on with the cow. If you reach succor, return for me and my

endurance, suddenly enfeebled by the ordeal thrust upon him,

d passionately. "We are fated to die; then be it so. I swear by the P

t this day of late July would witness no relief of tortured earth by the long-deferred monsoon. All nature was still. The air had the hush of the grave. The greenery of trees and shrubs was blighted. The bare plain, the rocks, the boulder-strewe

at the arid ravines and bleak passes behind were even less hospitable than the lowlands in front. Knowledge of what was past had murdered hope for the future. They had almost cease

rtured, were now poverty-stricken and persecuted because one of the warring divisions of Islam had risen to power in Ispahán. "It shall come to pass," said Mahomet, "that my people shall be divid

fascinated by his gifts and dazzled by his magnificence, had styled Akbar "the Great"-the forlorn couple, young in years, endowed with remarkable physical charms

all manner of herbs and fruits and wholesome seeds were ready to burst forth with utmost prodigality when the rain-clouds gathered on the hills and discharged their gracious showers over a soil athirst. But Allah, in His exceeding wisdom, had seen fit to

the level ground. She stood now, regarding her companions in suffering with her big violet eyes and almost contentedly chewing some wizened herbage gathered by the man overnight. Strange to say, it was on the capabilities of the cow t

f Kandahár. There, even in this period of want, the boundless charity of the East would save them from death by starvation. But the infant was exhausting he

gly at last. And now, when the woman saw the strong man in a palsy at her feet, her love for him vanquish

and do with her as seemeth best. Not for myself

s as lead and his hands shook as he fondled the warm and almost plump body of the infant. Here was

l tree, and left it there. Bidding the two boys, dark-eyed youngsters aged three and five, to cling tightly to the pillion on the cow's back, he took the ha

, without special reason, began to cry. The mother, always turning her head, wept wit

l would ring in his ears until they were closed to all mortal sounds. He took no note of the rough caravan track they followed, marked as it was by the ashes o

d shut out forever from her eyes the sight of that tiny bundle lying in the roots of the tree. So she choked back her sob

e. Though she was a Persian lady of utmost refinement and great accomplishments, she came of a har

d he. "Be it so. I can strive

ace where sand offered a softer cou

evive her. Then I shall kill poor Deri (the cow), and we can feast on her in

tle while. Soon the scanty meat she would yield would become uneatable and they were lost beyond saving. Nevertheless, once the resolve was

le one. After another stride he stood still. A fresh tribulation awaited him. Many times girdling the child's lim

to emit sparks of venemous fire, and the forked tongue was darting in and out

crushed the life out of its prey. Using words which were no prayer, the father uplifted the tough staff which he still carried. He

as seemed most expedient, it received another blow whic

imbs, now that the tight clutch of its terrible assailant was withdrawn.

-nisa," he cried. And truly the mother stirred again with the

ys, the greater portion to the baby, and was refuting his wife's remonstrance that he had taken none himself as he pressed the remainder on

Arab horses or riding camels, others on foot; behind this nearer group t

cried Mihr-ul-ni

r own anguish of mind, had prevented the Persian and his wife from noting the glittering spear points of the warrior merchant's retainers as th

t?" cried the woman, of whom

e found t

t sn

or the child, when you fell in a s

look came i

murmured; "it would h

re now spurring towards them. Mirza Ali

richly attired, reined in his horse at a l

omet, Sher Khan, 't

tioned Ali Beg, mostly concerning the disabled and dying snake,

quence; he ended with a pathetic request f

alik Masúd, the elder of the two horsemen and leader of the train, told how he dreamt the previous night that during a way

t of that seen in his disturbing vision, but his amazement was com

d her husband and two sons on another, and Deri, the cow, before joining the tr

in comfort and safety. They rode through the gaunt jaws of the Khaibar Pass, and emerged, after

pily in the arms of Mihr-ul-nisa was destined to become a beautiful, gracious and wo

fifty-six armed merchantmen and twenty pinnaces swept along the Channel in gallant show. Spread out in a gigantic crescent, the Spanish ships were likened by anxious watchers to a great bird of prey with outs

Ship after ship was sunk, captured, or driven on shore. A whole week the cannon roared from Plymouth Sound to Calais, and there the last great fight took place in which the Duke

e hawk-like British ships, the Resolution, hastily manned at Deal by volu

amanship and gunnery gave place to swords and pikes. Three times did the assaila

allant gentleman from Wensleydale in the North, Sir Robert Mowbray, to

y, maddened by the success of his country's hereditary foe, sprang from the nook in wh

ain, who was in the act of yielding up his sword. One outstretched arm of the i

leader. The galleon became a slaughter-house. The monk, frenzied as a beast in the shambles, sprang overboard and was carried past another shi

ain Fra Geronimo from the great Jesuit seminary at Toledo. They remembered the name so

omancy, whereby the lives of gallant men and fair women should be bound indissolubly. Yet it was so, as those who follow this strange and true history