Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 8.djvu/100

88 a great purse containing a thousand dinars, which his mother had forgotten beside the chest. So he took this also and tying the two purses about his middle, set out before dawn in the direction of Boulac, where he arrived whenas the day broke and all creatures arose, attesting the unity of God the Opener [of the gates of sustenance and mercy] and went forth each upon his several business, to suffer that which God had allotted to him.

He walked on along the river-bank till he saw a ship with her gangway out and her four grapnels made fast to the land. The folk were going up into her and coming down from her, and Noureddin, seeing some sailors standing there, asked them whither they were bound. ‘To the city of Rosetta,’ answered they; and he said, ‘Take me with you.’ Quoth they, ‘Welcome and fair welcome to thee, O goodly youth!’ So he betook himself forthright to the market and buying what he needed of victual and bedding and covering [for the voyage], returned to the port and went on board the ship, which was ready to sail and tarried with him but a little while before it weighed anchor and fared on, without stopping, till it reached Rosetta, where Noureddin saw a small boat going to Alexandria. So he embarked in it and traversing the [Mehmoudiyeh] canal, fared on till he came to a bridge called El Jami, where he landed and entered Alexandria by the gate called the Gate of the Lote-tree.

God protected him, so that none of those who stood at the gate saw him, and he entered the city, which he found a strongly fortified city, goodly of pleasaunces, delightful to its inhabitants and inviting to abide therein. The season of winter had departed from it with its cold and the season of spring was come to it with its roses: its flowers were in blossom and its trees in full leaf; its fruits were ripe and its waters welled forth. Indeed, it was a city goodly of ordinance and construction; its folk were