Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 5.djvu/111

89 King, that, when thou camest to our island, we knew that thou wouldst be Sultan over us and we feared lest thou shouldst embark in the boat and flee from us, in our absence; so we sank it.’

When Janshah heard this, he turned to his men and said to them, ‘There is nothing for it but to submit patiently to what God the Most High hath ordained; for we have no means of escaping from these apes.’ Then they fared on inland, till they came to the banks of a river, on the other side of which was a high mountain, whereon Janshah saw a multitude of ghouls, riding on horses, and marvelled at the vastness of their bulk and the strangeness of their favour; for some of them had heads like oxen and others like camels. So he turned to the apes and said to them, ‘What are these ghouls?’ And they answered, saying, ‘Know, O King, that these ghouls are our mortal enemies and we come hither to do battle with them.’ As soon as the ghouls espied the army of the apes, they rushed down to the river-bank and standing there, fell to pelting them with stones as big as maces, and there befell a sore battle between them. Presently, Janshah, seeing that the ghouls were getting the better of the apes, cried out to his men, saying, ‘Take your bows and arrows and shoot at them and keep them off from us.’ So they shot at the ghouls and slew of them much people, whereupon there befell them sore dismay and defeat and they turned to flee, which when the apes saw, they forded the river and chased the ghouls, killing many of them in the pursuit, to the top of the hill, where they disappeared.

Here Janshah found a tablet of alabaster, whereon were written these words, ‘O thou that enterest this land, know that thou wilt become Sultan over these apes and that, so long as thou abidest with them, they will be victorious over the ghouls; nor is there any escape for thee from