burton--1001-nights--sample

head wind struck us, and the sea rose against us with huge waves; the
billows sorely buffetted us and a dense darkness settled round us. We
gave ourselves up for lost and I said, “Whoso endangereth his days,
e’en an he ’scape deserveth no praise.” Then we prayed to Allah and
besought Him; but the storm-blasts ceased not to blow against us nor
the surges to strike us till morning broke, when the gale fell, the seas
sank to mirrory stillness and the sun shone upon us kindly clear.
Presently we made an island where we landed and cooked somewhat
of food, and ate heartily and took our rest for a couple of days.
Then we set out again and sailed other twenty days, the seas broadening
and the land shrinking. Presently the current ran counter to us, and
we found ourselves in strange waters, where the Captain had lost his
reckoning, and was wholly bewildered in this sea; so said we to the
look-out man, “Get thee to the mast-head and keep thine eyes open.”
He swarmed up the mast and looked out and cried aloud, “O Rais,
I espy to starboard something dark, very like a fish floating on the face
of the sea, and to larboard there is a loom in the midst of the main,
now black and now bright.” When the Captain heard the look-out’s
words he dashed his turband on the deck and plucked out his beard
and beat his face saying, “Good news indeed! we be all dead men; not
one of us can be saved.” And he fell to weeping and all of us wept for
his weeping and also for our lives; and I said, “O Captain, tell us what
it is the look-out saw.”
“O my Prince,” answered he, “know that we lost our course on the
night of the storm, which was followed on the morrow by a two-days’
calm during which we made no way; and we have gone astray eleven
days reckoning from that night, with ne’er a wind to bring us back to
our true course. To-morrow by the end of the day we shall come to a
mountain of black stone, hight the Magnet Mountain; for thither the
193