Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 16.djvu/259

 the entrance of the cave, and went forth from it, like one intoxicated, giddy from excessive sleeplessness and hunger and fear.

I then walked along the valley; and while I was thus occupied, lo, a great slaughtered animal fell before me, and I found no one. So I wondered thereat extremely; and I remembered a story that I heard long before from certain of the merchants and travellers, and persons in the habit of journeying about,that in the mountains of the diamonds are experienced great terrors, and that no one can gain access to the diamonds, but that the merchants who import them know a stratagem by means of which to obtain them: that they take a sheep, and slaughter it, and skin it, and cut up its flesh, which they throw down from the mountain to the bottom of the valley: so, descending fresh and moist, some of these stones stick to it. Then the merchants leave it until midday, and birds of the large kind of vulture and the aquiline vulture descend to that meat, and, taking it in their talons, fly up to the top of the mountain; whereupon the merchants come to them, and cry out at them, and they fly way from the meat. The merchants then advance to that meat, and take from it the stones sticking to it; after which they leave the meat for the birds and the wild beasts, and carry the stones to their countries. And no one can procure the diamonds but by means of this stratagem.Therefore when I beheld that slaughtered animal, and remembered this story, I arose and went to the slaughtered beast. I then selected a great number of these stones, and put them into my pocket, and within my clothes; and I proceeded to select, and put into my pockets and my girdle and my turban, and within my clothes. And while I was doing thus, lo, another great slaughtered animal. So I bound myself to it with my turban, and, laying myself down on my back, placed it upon my bosom, and grasped it firmly. Thus it was raised high above the ground; and, behold, a vulture descended upon it, seized it with its talons, and flew up with it into the air, with me attached to it; and it ceased not to soar up until it had ascended with it to the summit of the mountain, when it alighted with it, and was about to tear off some of it. And thereupon a great and loud cry arose from behind that vulture, and something made a clattering with a piece of wood upon the mountain; whereat the vulture flew away in fear, and soared into the sky.