Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 8.djvu/370

352 to look upon, and with her two children, each having in his hand a young fish, which he munched as a man would munch a cucumber. When she saw the fisherman with her husband, she said, ‘What is this lacktail?’ And she and her sons and daughter came up to him and fell to examining his breech and saying, ‘Yea, by Allah, he is tailless!’ And they laughed at him. So he said to the merman, ‘O my brother, hast thou brought me hither to make me a laughing-stock for thy wife and children?’ ‘Pardon, O my brother,’ answered the merman. ‘Those who have no tails are rare among us, and whenever one such is found, the Sultan taketh him, to make him sport, and he abideth a marvel amongst us, and all who see him laugh at him. But, O my brother, excuse these young children and this woman, for they lack understanding.’ Then he cried out to his family, saying, ‘Hold your peace!’ So they were afraid and kept silence; whilst he went on to soothe Abdallah’s mind.

Presently, as they were talking, in came half a score mermen, tall and strong and stout, and said to him, ‘O Abdallah, it hath reached the king that thou hast with thee a lacktail.’ ‘Yes,’ answered the merman, ‘and this is he; but he is not of us nor of the children of the sea. He is my friend of the land and hath come to me as a guest and I purpose to carry him back to the land.’ Quoth they, ‘We cannot depart without him; so, if thou have aught to say, arise and come with him to the king; and whatsoever thou wouldst say to us, that say thou to the king.’ Then said the merman to the fisherman, ‘O my brother, my excuse is manifest, and we may not gainsay the king: but go thou with me to him and I will do my endeavour to deliver thee from him, if it please God. Fear not, for he deemeth thee of the children of the sea; but, when he seeth thee, he will know thee to be of the children of the land, whereupon he will surely entreat