Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 5.djvu/251

219 been absent from them seven-and-twenty years in this my seventh voyage.

Then I foreswore travel and vowed to God the Most High to venture no more by land or sea, for that this last voyage had surfeited me of travel and adventure; and I thanked God and praised and glorified Him for having restored me to my country and home and friends. Consider, therefore, O Sindbad, O landsman,’ continued the host, addressing himself to the porter, ‘what sufferings I have undergone and what perils and hardships I have endured [before coming to my present state of prosperity].’ ‘For God’s sake, O my lord,’ answered the porter, ‘pardon me the wrong I did thee.’ And they ceased not from friendship and loving fellowship, [abiding] in all cheer and delight and solace of life, till there came to them that which destroyeth delights and sundereth companies, that which layeth waste the palaces and peopleth the tombs, to wit, the Cup of Death, and glory be to the Living One who dieth not! THE CITY OF BRASS.

It is related that the Commander of the Faithful Abdulmelik ben Merwan was seated one day in his palace at Damascus, conversing with his grandees and officers of state of the histories of people of old time, when the talk turned upon the traditions of our lord Solomon, son of David, (on whom be peace,) and of that which God the Most High had bestowed on him of lordship and dominion over men and Jinn and birds and beasts and reptiles and other created things, and quoth one of those who were present, ‘Of a truth we hear from those who forewent us that God (blessed and exalted be He!) vouchsafed unto