As we sat there (said the fat young man) with our backs against the brown rock, I amused myself by plucking away idly certain blades of long brown grass which fringed the lower portion of the rock near my hand; and these blades I twined, scarce thinking what I did, into a ring of a size to fit a finger. Instead of putting it on my own finger, I took my sister’s hand and placed the ring, jestingly, on the first finger of her right hand.
The Startling Effect of Making a Ring of Grass
No sooner was this done than a kind of groan came from the rock. The sand on which we sat heaved and shuddered. It rose beneath us, and we were lifted slowly into the air; and when we were higher than a man’s height above the ground we were thrown off on to the beach, and we were looking up at a monstrous creature in the shape of a man, who had risen up under us from beneath the sand. He was chocolate brown in color, and he towered above us full seven yards or more. The rock against which we had been sitting was, as we now perceived, his head; he had been lying, no doubt asleep, on his stomach under the sand, completely covered except for his head. We had been sitting above his buried shoulders, and leaning against the back of his head; and from this head, all bald but for a fringe of hair at the bottom, I had plucked the hairs which I had thought were grass.
“A genie!” I cried, and pulled my sister to her feet in fright.
The genie opened his mouth in a great yawn, and stretched his mighty arms; and as he breathed out again, jets of flame shot from his nostrils. He was bare, except for a wide cloth twisted around his middle from waist to thigh, and in the waistband he wore a long, curved scimitar, which flashed in the sun. He spread his hands out before him and bowed low.
“Were you asleep in the sand?” said my sister, recovering her wits first.
He bowed again.
“What do you want with us?” said my sister, becoming bolder.
“I await your commands,” said the genie, in a voice like the roaring of a waterfall.
“Oh!” said my sister. “Is it the ring of hair on my finger? Is that it?”