Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 3.djvu/19

3 overtook me, I was grown weak and my strength and courage failed me; so, desiring to eat and drink, I went forth, troubled in spirit and with a heart ill at ease. I walked on, till I reached yonder mountain, where I saw a tawny lion-whelp at the door of a cave. When he saw me, he rejoiced greatly in me, for my colour pleased him and my elegant shape: so he cried out to me, saying, “Draw nigh unto me.” So I went up to him and he said to me, “What is thy name and thy kind?” Quoth I, “My name is ‘duck,’ and I am of the bird-kind; but thou, why tarriest thou in this place till now?” “My father the lion,” answered he, “has bidden me many a day beware of the son of Adam, and it befell this night that I saw in my sleep the semblance of a son of Adam.” And he went on to tell me the like of that I have told you. When I heard this, I said to him, “O lion, I resort to thee, that thou mayst kill the son of Adam and steadfastly address thy thought to his slaughter; for I am greatly in fear for myself of him, and fear is added to my fear, for that thou also fearest the son of Adam, and thou the Sultan of the beasts.” Then, O my sister, I ceased not to bid him beware of the son of Adam and urge him to slay him, till he rose of a sudden from his stead and went out, lashing his flanks with his tail. He fared on, and I after him, till we came to a place, where several roads met, and saw cloud of dust arise, which, presently clearing away, discovered a naked runaway ass, and now running and galloping and now rolling in the dust. When the lion saw the ass, he cried out to him, and he came up to him submissively. Then said the lion, “Harkye, crack-brain! What is thy kind and what brings thee hither?” “O, son of the Sultan,” answered the ass, “I am by kind an ass, and the cause of my coming hither is that I am fleeing from the son of Adam.” “Dost thou fear then that he will kill thee?” asked the lion-whelp. “Not so, O son of the Sultan,” replied