The Queen sat in the balcony of a building erected for the purpose of enabling her to witness the sports without risk. She was surrounded by her women, who appeared to take no common pleasure in the sanguinary pastime. Among them was the daughter of an Omrah, an extremely pretty girl, to whom her mistress was much attached, and who, by way of distinction, sat at her feet on the present occasion. She waved her handkerchief with all the energy of girlish delight as the victorious buffalo was careering round the area, when a champion appeared before the spectators, causing a hush of breathless suspense as he advanced towards the enraged animal, and declared aloud his determination to encounter it. He was a man singularly handsome, with the frame of a Hercules cast in the perfect mould of graceful proportion. He was tall, but robust; broad, but compactly formed; every muscle, for he was naked from his waist upward and from the knees downward, swelling from the surface of his body with an undulation of symmetry that appeared the very perfection of manly beauty. The calm but intense gleam of his eye, which did not for a moment relax, was a legible record, not to be misinterpreted, of his steady drift of purpose and indomitable resolution. His lips were gently compressed, his head was slightly inclined upon the right shoulder, his step was deliberate but firm, and his whole bearing such as could not be mistaken for anything but that of a man of the highest physical endowments. He was armed with a short broad sabre, which he grasped in his right hand, and a heavy-bladed dagger was stuck in his belt. The buffalo roared as its adversary advanced, pawed the ground, bent its head, and rushed furiously towards the stranger, who leaping on one side with great agility, the infuriated beast continued its career for several yards. It however soon returned to the charge, and with a celerity which required all the wary caution and cool activity, so eminently possessed by the champion, to avoid. It was again foiled, but it became only the more enraged, and pursued its enemy with such vigour that he had great difficulty to evade the intended mischief. At length, seeing that the danger was heightening as the animal was in full career towards him, he sprang out of its path, and striking forward with his sword, broke off one of its horns close to the head. The wounded beast bellowed with agony, and turned suddenly round upon its adversary, who, evading a contact with the same dexterity as before, struck his dumb antagonist so powerful a blow upon the neck as nearly severed the head, and the buffalo rolled at his feet in the pangs of death. He then coolly bowed to the Sultana, and retired. “Who is that?” she inquired of an officer who had the direction of the sports. “An Abyssinian slave, most potent Queen, celebrated alike for the beauty of his person and his prodigious strength of body.” “His name?” “Yakoot.” “To whom does he belong?”