“Glory to Marduk!” howled Gudea, “the spell works. The Maskim depart. Now, wife.” Binit leaped to her feet with a screech that sent all the sparrows scurrying from the eaves. Seven times she screamed, until every ear was tingling, and all the time Gudea danced faster, faster, in a narrow circle about Saruch.
“Come out of him! Come out of him! Away, away!” he yelled at each interval in the screeching. The sick man was tottering to his feet.
“Glory to Marduk!” bawled Gudea again, “the fiends are mastered. The final spell now, the infallible incantation.”
And every breath was bated while he chanted, still dancing, the age-honoured song of the “Maskim”:—
“Seven are they, they are seven!
In the deeps below they are seven;
In the crest of heaven they are seven;
In the low abyss were reared the seven;
Man or woman are none of the seven;
Whirlwinds baneful are all the seven;