With brute force, they heaved down great weights, then daintily wove and spun; like the trunk of the elephant, which lays lifeless a river-horse, and counts the pulses of a moth.

On all sides, the place seemed alive with its spindles.

Round and round, round and round; throwing off wondrous births at every revolving; ceaseless as the cycles that circle in heaven.

Loud hummed the loom, flew the shuttle like lightning, red roared the grim forge, rung anvil and sledge; yet no mortal was seen.
"What ho, magician! Come forth from thy cave!" But all deaf were the spindles, as the mutes, that mutely wait on the Sultan.
"Since we are born, we will live!" so we read on a crimson banner, flouting the crimson clouds, in the van of a riotous red-bonneted mob, racing by us as we came from the glen.

Many more followed: black, or blood-stained:--.
"Mardi is man's!" "Down with landholders!" "Our turn now!" "Up rights! Down wrongs!" "Bread! Bread!" "Take the tide, ere it turns!" Waving their banners, and flourishing aloft clubs, hammers, and sickles, with fierce yells the crowd ran on toward the palace of Bello.