Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 7.djvu/52

34 after having taken leave of the king. They sailed ten days with a favouring wind; but, on the eleventh day, the sea became exceeding troubled, the ship rose and fell and the sailors availed not to govern her. So they drifted at the mercy of the waves, till the ship drove upon a rock and broke up and all on board were drowned, except Bedr, who got astride one of the planks of the vessel, after having been nigh upon death. The sea and the wind carried the plank along for three days, whilst he knew not whither he went and had no means of directing its motion; till, on the fourth day, the plank grounded with him on the sea-shore in sight of a white city, as it were a passing white dove, goodly of ordinance, with high towers and lofty walls, builded upon a tongue of land that jutted out into the sea and the waves beating against its walls.

When Bedr saw this, he rejoiced with an exceeding joy, for he was well-nigh dead with hunger and thirst, and dismounting from the plank, would have gone up the beach to the city; but there came down to him mules and asses and horses, in number as the sands [of the sea] and fell a-striking at him and hindering him from landing. So he swam round to the back of the city, where he landed and entering the place, found none therein and marvelled at this, saying, ‘I wonder to whom does this city belong, wherein is no king nor any inhabitant, and whence came the mules and asses and horses that hindered me from landing?’

Then he fared on at hazard, musing on his case, till he espied an old man, a grocer, [sitting at the door of his shop]. So he saluted him and the other returned his greeting and seeing him to be a handsome young man, said to him, ‘O youth, whence comest thou and what brings thee to this city?’ Bedr told him his story; at which the old man marvelled and said, ‘O my son, didst thou see any in thy way?’ ‘Indeed, O my father,’