Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 8.djvu/359

343 So he sent for the baker and the king invested him with the vizier’s habit and made him vizier of the left, making Abdallah of the land his vizier of the right. On this wise the fisherman abode a whole year, every day carrying the merman the basket full of fruit and receiving it back, full of jewels; and when fruit failed from the gardens, he carried him raisins and almonds and hazel-nuts and walnuts and figs and so forth; and all that he brought him the merman accepted and returned him the basket full of jewels, as of wont.

It chanced one day that he carried him the basket, full of dry fruits, according to custom, and his friend took them from him. Then they sat down to converse, the fisherman on the beach and the merman in the water, near the shore, and conversed; and the talk went round between them, till it fell upon the subject of tombs; whereupon quoth the merman, ‘O my brother, they say that the Prophet (whom God bless and preserve!) is buried with you on the land. Knowest thou his tomb?’ ‘Yes,’ answered Abdallah. ‘It lies in a city called Yethrib.’ ‘And do the people of the land visit it?’ asked the merman. ‘Yes,’ replied the fisherman, and the other said, ‘I give you joy, O people of the land, of visiting [the tomb of] that noble and compassionate prophet, which whoso visits merits his intercession! Hast thou