you! Where is my enemy who oweth me so much?” Quoth they, “When thou mountest and we went with thee, thou didst not bid us guard him;” and Gharib exclaimed, “There is no Majesty and there is no Might save in Allah, the Glorious, the Great!” But Al-Damigh said to him, “Hasten not nor be concerned, for where can he go, and we in pursuit of him?” Now the manner of Ajib’s escape was in this wise. His page Sayyar had been ambushed in the camp and when he saw Gharib mount and ride forth, leaving none to guard his enemy Ajib, he could hardly credit his eyes. So he waited awhile and presently crept to the tent and taking Ajib, who was senseless for the pain of the bastinado, on his back, made off with him into the open country and fared on at the top of his speed from early night to the next day, till he came to a spring of water, under an apple tree. There he set down Ajib from his back and washed his face, whereupon he opened his eyes and seeing Sayyar, said to him, “O Sayyar, carry me to Cufa that I may recover there and levy horsemen and soldiers wherewith to overthrow my foe: and know, O Sayyar, that I am anhungered.” So Sayyar sprang up and going out to the desert caught an ostrich-poult and brought it to his lord. Then he gathered fuel and deftly using the fire-sticks kindled a fire, by which he roasted the bird which he had hallal’d[FN#9] and fed Ajib with its flesh and gave him to drink of the water of the spring, till his strength returned to him, after which he went to one of the Badawi tribal encampments, and stealing thence a steed mounted Ajib upon it and journeyed on with him for many days till they drew near the city of Cufa. The Viceroy of the capital came out to meet and salute the King, whom he found weak with the beating his brother had inflicted upon him; and Ajib entered the city and called his physicians. When they answered his summons, he bade them heal him in less than ten days’ time: they said, “We hear and we obey,” and they tended him till he became whole of the sickness that was upon him and of the punishment. Then he commanded his Wazirs to write letters to all his Nabobs and vassals, and he indited one-and-twenty writs and despatched them to the governors, who assembled their troops and set out for Cufa by forced marches.——And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say. When it was the Six Hundred and Forty-first Night,