He had scarce taken more than a couple of steps through the street,áczKú when the Padishah’s herald came along, and proclaimed to the inhabitants of the town that the Sultan’s daughter disappeared every night from the palace. Whoever could find out what became of her should receive the damsel and half the kingdom. “Here am I!” cried the youth, “lead me to the Padishah, and if I don’t find out, let them take my head!”
So they brought the fool into the palace, and in the evening there lay the Sultan’s daughter watching, with her eyes half-closed, all that was going on. The damsel was only waiting for him to go to sleep, and presently she stuck a needle into her heel, took the candle with her, lest the youth should awake, and went out by a side door.
The youth had his turban on his head in a trice, and no sooner had he popped out of the same door than he saw a black efrit standing there with a golden buckler on his head, and on the buckler sat the Sultan’s daughter, and they were just on the point of starting off. The lad was not such a fool as to fancy that he could keep up with them by himself, so he also leaped on to the buckler, and very nearly upset the pair of them in consequence. The efrit was alarmed, and asked the damsel in Allah’s name what she was about, as they were within a hair’s-breadth of falling. “I never moved,” said the damsel; “I am sitting on the buckler just as you put me there.”
The black efrit had scarcely taken a couple of steps, when he felt that the buckler was unusually heavy. The youth’s turban naturally made him invisible, so the efrit turned to the damsel and said: “My Sultana, thou art so heavy to-day that I all but break down beneath thee!”--“Darling Lala!” replied the girl, “thou art very odd to-night, for I am neither bigger nor smaller than I was yesterday.”
Shaking his head the black efrit pursued his way, and they went on and on till they came to a wondrously beautiful garden, where the trees were made of nothing but silver and diamonds. The youth broke off a twig and put it in his pocket, when straightway the trees began to sigh and weep and say: “There’s a child of man here who tortures us! there’s a child of man here who tortures us!”