Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 9.djvu/202

176 and evensong. Then they sat carousing, and Nasir and Mensour fell to telling stories, first one and then the other, whilst Abdallah hearkened. Now they three were alone in a pavilion, the rest of the company being in another place, and they ceased not to tell tales and jests and pleasant traits and anecdotes, till Abdallah’s heart was dissolved within him for watching and sleep overcame him. So they spread him a bed and he put off his clothes and lay down.

They lay down beside him on another couch and waited till they saw that he was drowned in sleep, when they arose and knelt upon him: whereupon he awoke and seeing them kneeling on his breast, said to them, ‘What is this, O my brothers?’ ‘We are no brothers of thine,’ answered they, ‘nor do we know thee, lack-courtesy that thou art! Thy death is become better than thy life.’ Then they gripped him by the throat and throttled him, till he lost his senses and abode without motion, so that they deemed him dead. Now the pavilion in which they were overlooked the river; so they cast him therein; but, when he fell, God sent to his aid a dolphin, which was wont to come under the pavilion, for that the kitchen had a window that gave upon the water, and as often as they killed any beast there, it was their wont to throw the offal into the river and the dolphin came and picked it up from the surface of the water; wherefore it still resorted to the place. That day they had cast out much offal, by reason of the banquet; so the dolphin ate more than of wont and gained strength. When it heard the splash of Abdallah’s fall, it hastened to the spot, where it saw a man, and God guided it, so that it took him on its back and crossing the river, made with him for the other bank, where it cast him ashore.

Now the place where the dolphin cast him up was a beaten way, and presently up came a caravan and finding