Then he would touch his forehead with his hand and bow his head and they rode on unmolested.
"See," she said, when they had thus been stopped for the fourth time, "what chance you had of winning through to Masyaf unguarded.

Why, I tell you, brethren, that you would have been dead before ever you passed the gates of the first castle." Now they rode up a long slope, and at its crest paused to look upon a marvellous scene.

Below them stretched a vast plain, full of villages, cornfields, olive-groves, and vineyards.

In the centre of this plain, some fifteen miles away, rose a great mountain, which seemed to be walled all about.

Within the wall was a city of which the white, flat-roofed houses climbed the slopes of the mountain, and on its crest a level space of land covered with trees and a great, many-towered castle surrounded by more houses.
"Behold the home of Al-je-bal, Lord of the Mountain," said Masouda, "where we must sleep to-night.