The King's Talisman — page 25: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

16 THE KING'S TALISMAN. wild fig trees and running vines. Here it was that Nou reddin had heard the noise, and drawing his sword from its scabbard, he moved the branches one side and looked in ~ among the shrubbery. Hardly had he done this, and before he could penetrate the thick gloom, when a voice from the darkness cried out: | «Ah, good Eblis—good Eblis!* let us go, and we will — depart in peace!” : «Then out you come!” shouted Noureddin, who saw at once the character of the lodgers, at the same time feeling a desire to see who could have taken such a place for repose. “Come out on the instant, or it shall be the worse for you.” In a few moments the head and shoulders of a powerfully built man emerged from the shrubbery, and as he stepped forth from the cove he was followed by two more indi- viduals equally as stout. “This way—this way!” cried Noureddin, as he saw that ams Be the nest had been cleared, and with his sword still drawn in his ‘hand, he led the way to the outer entrance of the pass. : He could not repress a light laugh when the frightened men stood revealed before him, for most mortals would have . taken either of them to have been the very individual of | whom they had been in fear. As the light fell upon their burly forms, they proved to be three of the king’s black eunuchs. | ; ‘“ Now, what seek ye here?” asked the youth, who at first * The name for his Satanic majesty. Hence the pass was called Eblian, because the people believed that when the devil escaped from Moses he cut his way through this rock in his flight to Mount Hor; and a popular tradition _ said that even now he often passed whole nights in the pass, to protect his imps and jackwins who reveled among the mountains, Eomichooks. co