Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 7.djvu/304

276 way of using myself to what may come.’ The merchants laughed at him and said, ‘Leave this foolery, may God not bless thee and the dinars thou hast gotten! For thou hast disturbed us this night and troubled our hearts.’

So Khelifeh left flogging himself and slept till the morning, when he arose and would have gone about his business, but bethought him of his hundred dinars and said in himself, ‘If I leave them at home, thieves will steal them, and if I put them in a belt about my waist, belike some one will see me and lay in wait for me in some lonely place and slay me and take the money from me: but I have a device that should serve me right well.’ So he made him a pocket in the collar of his gown and tying the hundred dinars up in a purse, laid them therein. Then he took his net and basket and staff and went down to the Tigris, where he cast his net, but brought up nothing. So he removed to another place and cast again, but still the net came up empty; and he went on removing from place to place and casting the net without better success, till he had gone half a day’s journey from the city. So he said in himself, ‘By Allah, I will cast but this once more, whatever come of it!’

Then he cast the net with all his force, of the excess of his vexation, and the purse flew out of his pocket and lighting in the middle of the stream, was carried away by the current; whereupon he threw down the net and pulling off his clothes, left them on the bank and plunged into the water after the purse. He dived for it nigh a hundred times, without chancing on it, till his strength was exhausted and he came up for sheer fatigue. When he despaired of finding the purse, he returned to the shore, where he saw nothing but his net and basket and staff and sought for his clothes, but could light on no trace of them: so he said to himself, ‘O vilest of those whereon was made the byword, “The pilgrimage is not