astonishment: What is this great wonder? For all these women fight for
me, as if they had never seen a man in their lives before. Where then
can the men be, to whom they must belong? Or can it be, that I have come
to a city composed of women without a man? Have I escaped the desert,
only to be drowned in a sea of women? For what is the use of a single
man, in an ocean of the other sex? Or are they dragging me away to offer
me up to the Mother[7], having sacrificed all their own husbands
already? Or have I really died in the desert, and is all this only a
dream of the other world? Can these be the heavenly Apsarases, come in a
body to fetch me away, as if I had fallen in battle? Surely they are,
for some of them are sufficiently beautiful even for Indra's hall. And
anyhow, it is better to be torn to pieces by beautiful women, even if
there are far too many, than to die in the desert, all alone.

[7] Durgá or Párwatí.

So as they bore him along, chattering on like jays and cranes, he said
again to the women next him: Fair ones, who are you, and where are you
taking me, and why in the world are you so greatly delighted to see me?
And then at last, they replied: O handsome stranger, ask nothing: very
soon thou shalt know all, for we are carrying thee away to our King. And
Aja said to himself: Ha! So, then, there is a King. These women have,
after all, a King. Truly, I am fain to see him, this singular King of a
female city. And weak as he was, he began to laugh, as they all were
laughing: and so they all surged on like a very sea of laughter, through
the gates of the city, and along the streets within, till they came at
last to the King's palace. And all the way, Aja looked, and there was
not to be seen so much as the shadow of a man in all the streets, which
overflowed with women like the channel of a river in the rainy season.