The palace is entered by a formidable-looking door, decorated with large spiked bosses of brass. This opens into a small court which contained at the time of our first visit the most imposing sight of the place, namely the lion in his cage to the left, into which Feysul was in the habit of introducing criminals of the deepest dye, to be devoured by this lordly executioner. Opposite to this cage of death is another, a low probationary cage, which, when we were there, contained a prisoner stretched out at full length, for the cage is too low to admit of a sitting posture. From this point he could view the horrors of the lion's cage, so that during his incarceration he might contemplate what might happen to him if he continued, on liberation, to pursue his evil ways. Another door leads into a vaulted passage full of guards, through which we passed and entered into an inner court with a pool in the centre and a wide cloister around it supporting a gallery. Sultan Feysul was then a very young man, not much over twenty. He was greatly interested in seeing us, for we were the first English travellers who had visited him since his accession. We caught sight of him peeping at us over the balcony as we passed through the courtyard below, and we had to clamber up a ladder to the gallery, where we found him ready to welcome us. He seized our hands and shook them warmly, and then led us with much effusiveness to his _khawah_, a long room just overhanging the sea, which is his reception and throne-room. Here were high, cane-bottomed chairs around the walls, and at one end a red chair, which is the throne; just over it were hung two grotesque pictures of our Queen and the Prince Consort, such as one could buy for a penny at a fair. They are looked upon as objects of great value here, and act as befitting symbols of our protectorate. The imam fed us with sweets and coffee, asked us innumerable questions, and seemed full of boyish fun. Certainly with his turban of blue and red checked cotton (which would have been a housemaid's duster at home), his faded, greenish yellow cloak, fastened round his slender frame by a red girdle, he looked anything but a king. As we were preparing to depart the young monarch grew apparently very uneasy, and impatiently shouted something to his attendants, and when the servant came in, Feysul hurried to him, seized four little gilt bottles of attar of roses, thrust two of them into each of our pockets, and with some compliments as to our Queen having eyes everywhere, and Feysul's certainty that she would look after him, the audience was at an end.