And stretching out his hands towards heaven, Bar Noemi answered the third time—
"I go into the presence of God!"
And, indeed, the road that lay before him led even to God's judgment-seat.
When they came to that rocky plateau from whence they could survey the whole plain, the wondrous phantom of the Fata Morgana again appeared before them—the aerial palaces, the hanging gardens, and the toppling towers which, as they dissolved away, left behind them a sea that covered mountain and valley, so that only the distant pinnacles and the heads of the idols emerged above the billowy flood.
"'Tis the finger of God!" said the old man, with reverential awe, and he blessed the five men and bade them be strong that they might wrestle with God for a continent and the people of a continent. And pressing Bar Noemi's hand to his lips, he breathed in his palm, and said: "Blessed be he whom thou blessest and cursed whom thou cursedst!"
The five men descended the mountain.
But the old man led Byssenia back to his hut among his daughters, who welcomed her as a sister, and when he saw that the woman secretly bewailed her husband who had exposed himself to such dangers, he comforted her, and said—
"Fear nothing, for I know that Bar Noemi will return."
CHAPTER XII
THE DESTRUCTION OF A CONTINENT
The city shimmered from afar in the evening twilight as the five men arrived at the gates. All the houses were lit up with bright torches and coloured lamps. The feast of flowers had begun and here it lasted three days. During that time all the streets and housetops were strewn with fragrant flowers, the columns were intertwined with garlands gay and festoons of wreaths hung across the market-place from one statue to the other.