Lilith

Mara smiled, and brought them four loaves and a great jug of water.
"We will eat as we go," they said. But they drank the water with delight.
"I think," remarked one of them, "it must be elephant−juice! It makes me so strong!"
We set out, the Lady of Sorrow walking with us, more beautiful than the sun, and the white leopardess
following her. I thought she meant but to put us in the path across the channels, but I soon found she was
going with us all the way. Then I would have dismounted that she might ride, but she would not let me.
"I have no burden to carry," she said. "The children and I will walk together."
It was the loveliest of mornings; the sun shone his brightest, and the wind blew his sweetest, but they did not
comfort the desert, for it had no water.
We crossed the channels without difficulty, the children gamboling about Mara all the way, but did not reach
the top of the ridge over the bad burrow until the sun was already in the act of disappearing. Then I made the
Little Ones mount their elephants, for the moon might be late, and I could not help some anxiety about them.
The Lady of Sorrow now led the way by my side; the elephants followed−−the two that bore the princess in
the centre; the leopardess brought up the rear; and just as we reached the frightful margin, the moon looked
up and showed the shallow basin lying before us untroubled. Mara stepped into it; not a movement answered
her tread or the feet of my horse. But the moment that the elephants carrying the princess touched it, the
seemingly solid earth began to heave and boil, and the whole dread brood of the hellish nest was commoved.
Monsters uprose on all sides, every neck at full length, every beak and claw outstretched, every mouth agape.
Long−billed heads, horribly jawed faces, knotty tentacles innumerable, went out after Lilith. She lay in an
agony of fear, nor dared stir a finger. Whether the hideous things even saw the children, I doubt; certainly not
one of them touched a child; not one loathly member passed the live rampart of her body−guard, to lay hold
of her.
"Little Ones," I cried, "keep your elephants close about the princess. Be brave; they will not touch you."
"What will not touch us? We don't know what to be brave at!" they answered; and I perceived they were
unaware of one of the deformities around them.
"Never mind then," I returned; "only keep close."
Lilith
They were panoplied in their blindness! Incapacity to see was their safety. What they could nowise be aware
of, could not hurt them.
But the hideous forms I saw that night! Mara was a few paces in front of me when a solitary, bodiless head
bounced on the path between us. The leopardess came rushing under the elephants from behind, and would
have seized it, but, with frightful contortions of visage and a loathsome howl, it gave itself a rapid rotatory
twist, sprang from her, and buried itself in the ground. The death in my arms assoiling me from fear, I
regarded them all unmoved, although never, sure, was elsewhere beheld such a crew accursed!
Mara still went in front of me, and the leopardess now walked close behind her, shivering often, for it was
very cold, when suddenly the ground before me to my left began to heave, and a low wave of earth came
slinking toward us. It rose higher as it drew hear; out of it slouched a dreadful head with fleshy tubes for hair,
and opening a great oval mouth, snapped at me. The leopardess sprang, but fell baffled beyond it.
Lilith 134