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122
CRADLE TALES OF HINDUISM


But the daughter of Janneka, being borne through the air by Ravana, looked like lightning, shining against dark clouds. Like stars dropping from the sky, because their merit is exhausted, so did her golden ornaments begin to fall to the earth. And the anklets flashed as they dropped, like the circling lightning. And her chains shone, even as the Ganges throwing herself from heaven. And showers of blossoms fell from her head to the earth, and were drawn up again by the whirlwind of Havana's swift passage, so that they studded the space about him as he went, in a ring, and looked like rows of burning stars, shining about a sombre mountain.

And the trees, waving their branches in the agitation of this flight, strove to whisper, "Fear not! Fear not!" And the mountains with their waterfalls and their summits towering upwards like uplifted arms, seemed to lament for Sita. And the lotuses faded in the pools, and the fish became troubled, and all the creatures of the forest trembled, for wrath and fear. And the wind wailed, and the darkness deepened, and the world wept, while Sita was borne away by Ravana to his island-kingdom of Lanka in the south.

But she, as she went, seeing Eve great monkeys seated on the top of a hill, conceived a sudden hope that by their means she might send news to Rama, and flung down amongst them, unseen by