Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 5.djvu/196

170 one day, as we sailed, midmost the surging sea, swollen with clashing billows, the master, who stood in the ship’s side, examining the sea in all directions, cried out with a great cry and bade furl the sail and cast out the anchors. Then he buffeted his face and plucked out his beard and rent his clothes, saying, “Alas!” and “Woe worth the day! O merchants, we are all lost!” So we said to him, “O master, what is to do?” and he replied, “Know, o my brethren, (may God preserve you,) that the wind has gotten the better of us and driven us out of our course into mid-ocean, and fate, for our ill fortune, hath brought us to the Mountain of the Zughb, who are a folk like apes, never fell any among them and came off alive, and my heart misgives me that we are all dead men.”

Hardly had he made an end of his speech when the ship was boarded by an innumerable multitude of the islanders, who are the most frightful of wild creatures like apes, foul of favour and little of stature, being but four spans high, yellow-eyed and black-a-viced and covered with black hair like felt; none knoweth their language nor what they are, and they shun the company of men. They swarmed like locusts about the vessel and the shore, and we feared to strike them or drive them away, because of their vast multitude, lest, if we slew one, the rest should fall on us and kill us, for numbers prevail over courage; so we let them do their will, albeit we feared they would plunder our goods and gear. They swarmed up the cables and gnawed them in sunder, and on like wise they did with all the ropes of the ship, so that it fell off from the wind and stranded upon the mountain. Then they laid hands on all the merchants and crew, and landing us on the island, made off with the ship and its cargo we knew not whither.

We abode on the island, eating of its herbs and fruits