'When consciousness returned, the sun was setting beyond the snow-covered mountains, and faint and blue their spotless cones rose like the waves of a frozen sea around the distant walls of Koniah. On the gilded domes of its twelve great mosques, and the hundred minars of its lesser shrines, fell the last rays of that sinking sun; and full of thoughts of awe and death, I turned me, in penitence and grief, from the horrors of that lost battle-field, and bent my head in prayer as the shrill cries of the muezzins reached me from the tall steeples of the Sultan Selim and of Sheik Ibrahim; and as I prayed, the dying sunset faded on the snow-capped hills and gilded domes; the minarets grew dark and cold, and ghastly mountain-piles turned to purple tints as the night set in, deep, calm, and beautiful. The stars were sparkling above the silent city and that dreadful battle-plain. A painful and burning thirst oppressed me; and while crawling towards a spring that bubbled near me in the moonlight, I again became unconscious.
'Glory be to Allah and to his Prophet! Amid that unconsciousness or stupor which oppressed me there came at times a sense of pain in my smarting wound, and of thirst in my parched throat, while the gurgle of the fresh, cool fountain sung drowsily in my ear, like the murmur of a distant multitude.
'Recollection came again, and I saw the fountain sparkling in the moonlight, which tipped with silver the blue and white water-lilies, and every floweret, leaf, and shrub, for all was bright and clear as in the brightest and clearest noon.
'While gazing at the glittering water with longing eyes, lo! I suddenly beheld before me the beautiful figure of a woman—a nymph lovely beyond all earthly loveliness. Dazzling as Ayesha, the best-beloved wife of Mohammed, and fair as the rose of Cashmere, her exquisite form, was discernible through the only garment she wore, a slight cymar of green—the colour sacred to the Prophet—and her smooth round limbs were white as the driven snow. Her slender neck, her curved shoulders, and tapered arms, were modelled in the most charming symmetry; a faint blush was on her soft cheek, and the expression of her large dark eyes was such as I dare not trust myself to describe, for they possessed a lustre and a winning sweetness which confused, fascinated, and bewildered me. Long and black as winter night, her glossy tresses fell upon her white shoulders, and half shrouded her swelling bosom.
'The air around her was filled with delicious perfume. She spoke to me; but for a time I knew not what she said; for with her voice there seemed to come a stream of gentle music from a distance; and by its melody I was filled with a rapture such as never fired my soul, or swept my nerves before.
'Her sparkling eyes were full of conscious power; her radiant smile was full of conscious loveliness, tempered by all the pride of purity and innocence; for know, O Frank! that she who stood before me was one of the Hûr al Oyn—the black-eyed girls of Paradise—the ever-blooming brides of the faithful, though I knew it not then; but imagined—sinner that I was!—that some Naide of old, or some lascivious goddess of the lying Greeks had come to earth again.
'"Moustapha," said the maiden, "thou shalt not be one of those who will perish in this world and pass away with it on that day when the mighty hills shall roll like smoke before the dreadful wind, that is to blow from the east."
'"How, O beautiful one?" I asked, while trembling with a more than mortal joy.
'"Because, know, Hafiz Moustapha, that the blessed finger of the Prophet is on thee."
'"Upon me—a mite—an atom!"