So bright was it that Godwin could see strange shapes carven on the sheer face of the rock, and beneath them writing which he could not read.
"What are these ?" he asked Masouda.
"The tablets of kings," she answered, "whose names are written in your holy book, who ruled Syria and Egypt thousands of years ago.
They were great in their day when they took this land, greater even than Salah-ed-din, and now these seals which they set upon this rock are all that is left of them." Godwin and Wulf stared at the weather-worn sculptures, and in the silence of that moonlit place there arose in their minds a vision of the mighty armies of different tongues and peoples who had stood in their pride on this road and looked upon yonder river and the great stone wolf that guarded it, which wolf, so said the legend, howled at the approach of foes.

But now he howled no more, for he lay headless beneath the waters, and there he lies to this day.

Well, they were dead, everyone of them, and even their deeds were forgotten; and oh! how small the thought of it made them feel, these two young men bent upon a desperate quest in a strange and dangerous land.

Masouda read what was passing in their hearts, and as they came to the brink of the river, pointed to the bubbles that chased each other towards the sea, bursting and forming again before their eyes.
"Such are we," she said briefly; "but the ocean is always yonder, and the river is always here, and of fresh bubbles there will always be a plenty.

So dance on life's water while you may, in the sunlight, in the moonlight, beneath the storm, beneath the stars, for ocean calls and bubbles burst.