Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 5.djvu/208

182 like madmen. Then the savages gave them to drink of cocoa-nut oil and anointed them therewith; and no sooner had they drunken thereof, than their eyes turned in their heads and they fell to eating greedily against their wont. When I saw this, I was confounded and grieved for them, nor was I less concerned for myself, for fear of the savages. So I watched them narrowly, nor was it long before I discovered them to be a tribe of cannibals. All who fell in their way they brought to their king and fed them upon this food and anointed them with cocoa-nut oil, whereupon their bellies expanded that they might eat amain, whilst their reason fled and they lost the power of thought and became idiots. Then they stuffed them with cocoa-nut oil and the aforesaid food, till they grew fat and stout, when they slaughtered them and roasted them for their king’s eating: but, as for the savages themselves, they ate human flesh raw.

When I was aware of this, I was sore dismayed for myself and my comrades, who were now become so brutalized that they knew not what was done with them and the savages committed them to one, who used every day to lead them out and pasture them on the island like cattle. As for me, I wasted away and became sickly for fear and hunger and my flesh shrivelled on my bones; which when the savages saw, they left me alone and took no thought of me, so that one day I gave them the slip and made for the beach, where I espied a man seated on a high place. I looked at him and knew him for the herdsman, who had charge of my fellows, and with him were great plenty of others like unto them. As soon as he saw me, he knew me to be in possession of my reason and signed to me from afar, as who should say, “Turn back and take the right-hand road, for that will lead thee into the king’s highway.” So I turned back, as he bade me, and