“Seize him!” cried the eunuch excitedly. “He is a slave who hath escaped!”
“My gracious lord the Sultan!” I gasped breathlessly, prostrating myself before the royal divan as the slaves pounced upon me. “Hear me, I beseech thee! Let not thy servants remove me before I have spoken.”
“The slave hath merely some paltry grievance,” exclaimed the eunuch, with ceremonious obeisance.
“It is no grievance,” I cried wildly. “I come to give thee warning, O Sultan, Mighty of the Earth, that ere the shadows lengthen thou wilt die!”
“Silence, slave! Heed what thou sayest!” the Sultan thundered, pale with anger as he rose stately and superb from his divan. He was tall and of majestic presence, though his dark, sinister features bore distinct impress of the vile and brutal passions which actuated him. “Silence!” he cried again, and his servants fell before him with genuflections inspired by awe. “Slave! thou, who hast passed the portals of the private courts of thy Sovereign to prophesy his discomforture, hast dared to address thy Ruler without leave! Knowest thou not that none are allowed in this our pavilion unless commanded, under pain of instant death?”
“I come to forewarn thee, O August Ruler, of impending evil—”
“Stop thy chatter, dog!” he shouted, his face livid with sudden passion. The storm burst, and the dark cloud, swollen with his accumulated exasperation, exploded in a tremolo full of threats. When the Sultan Hámed broke out, he was terrible. “I heed not the croakings of a common slave who—”
“But men, jealous of thy position, have plotted to compass thy death ere to-day’s sun hath set!”
“Liar! Thou art indeed demented,” he cried, in full combustion. Then, in the frightful rumbling of his phrases, in the incessant crackling of his words, he roared bitter corrosive invectives that caused his robust frame to vibrate as they issued forth. Suddenly, turning to his trembling body-servants, he added, “Seize him! Let his prophetic tongue be torn out as a punishment for daring to predict evil in our presence!”
“Hear me, I pray thee, Just and Mighty one, slow to anger and of great mercy! It is to save thy Majesty’s life that—”