[paragraph continues] "My dear husband tarries long. It is now a month since he has not returned; what can the matter be?" So she went and looked at the pond: lo, the water was red as blood! Then she knew that he must have been caught by a snake-charmer. Forth from the palace she came, and to the antheap; she saw the place where he had been caught, and the place where he had been tormented, and she wept. Then she went to the frontier village, and enquired; and learning all the fact, she went on to Benares, and in the midst of the people, above the palace court in the air she stood now lamenting. The Great Being as he danced looked up in the air, and saw. her, and being ashamed crept into his basket, and there he lay. When he crept into the basket, the king cried out, "What is the matter now?" Looking this way and that way, he saw her poised in the air, and recited the first stanza:

"Who is it like the lightning shines, or like a blazing star?
Goddess or Titaness? methinks no human thing you are."

Their conversation is given in the stanzas following:

"No Goddess I, nor Titaness, nor human, mighty king
A female of the serpent kind, come for a certain thing."

"Full of wrath and rage you show,
From your eyes the teardrops flow:
Say what wrong or what desire
Brings you, lady? I would know."

"Crawling serpent, fierce as flame!
So they called him: one there came,
Seized him for his profit, sire:
Freedom for my lord I claim!"

How could such a starveling wight
Catch a creature full of might?
Daughter of the serpents, say,
How to discern the snake aright?"

[460] "Such his might, that e'en this town
He could burn to cinders down.
But he loves the holy way,
And seeks austerity's renown."

Then the king asked how the man had caught him. She replied in the following stanza:

"On holy days the royal snake
At the four-ways used to take
Holy vows: a juggler caught him.
Free my husband for my sake!"

After these words she added yet these other two stanzas, begging his release:

"Lo sixteen thousand women gay with jewel and with ring,
Beneath the waters counted him their refuge and their king.

"Justly, gently set him free,
Buy the Serpent liberty,
With gold, a hundred kine, a village:
That will merit win for thee."

[461] Then the king recited three stanzas:

"Justly now and gently see
I buy the Serpent liberty
With gold, a hundred kine, a village,
That will merit win for me."

"A jewelled earring give I thee, a hundred drachms of gold,
A lovely throne like flower of flax with cushions laid fourfold!