When I awoke I found that we had indeed come to Perdondaris, that famous city.  For there it stood upon the left of us, a city fair and notable, and all the more pleasant for our eyes to see after the jungle that was so long with us.  And we were anchored by the marketplace, and the captain’s merchandise was all displayed, and a merchant of Perdondaris stood looking at it.  And the captain had his scimitar in his hand, and was beating with it in anger upon the deck, and the splinters were flying up from the white planks; for the merchant had offered him a price for his merchandise that the captain declared to be an insult to himself and his country’s gods, whom he now said to be great and terrible gods, whose curses were to be dreaded.  But the merchant waved his hands, which were of great fatness, showing his pink palms, and swore that of himself he thought not at all, but only of the poor folk in the huts beyond the city to whom he wished to sell the merchandise for as low a price as possible, leaving no remuneration for himself.  For the merchandise was mostly the thick toomarund carpets that in the winter keep the wind from the floor, and tollub which the people smoke in pipes.  Therefore the merchant said if he offered a piffek more the poor folk must go without their toomarunds when the winter came, and without their tollub in the evenings, or else he and his aged father must starve together.  Thereat the captain lifted his scimitar to his own throat, saying that he was now a ruined man, and that nothing remained to him but death.  And while he was carefully lifting he beard with his left hand, the merchant eyed the merchandise again, and said that rather than see so worthy a captain die, a man for whom he had conceived an especial love when first he saw the manner in which he handled his ship, he and his aged father should starve together and therefore he offered fifteen piffeks more.

When he said this the captain prostrated himself and prayed to his gods that they might yet sweeten this merchant’s bitter heart—­to his little lesser gods, to the gods that bless Belzoond.

At last the merchant offered yet five piffeks more.  Then the captain wept, for he said that he was deserted of his gods; and the merchant also wept, for he said that he was thinking of his aged father, and of how soon he would starve, and he hid his weeping face with both his hands, and eyed the tollub again between his fingers.  And so the bargain was concluded, and the merchant took the toomarund and tollub, paying for them out of a great clinking purse.  And these were packed up into bales again, and three of the merchant’s slaves carried them upon their heads into the city.  And all the while the sailors had sat silent, cross-legged in a crescent upon the deck, eagerly watching the bargain, and now a murmur of satisfaction arose among them, and they began to compare it among themselves with other bargains that they had known.  And I found out from them that there are