So taking heart I bought me goods, merchandise, and all needed for a voyage, and, impatient to be at sea, I embarked, with a company of merchants, on board a ship bound for Bassorah.  There we again embarked and sailed many days and nights, and we passed from isle to isle and sea to sea and shore to shore, buying and selling and bartering everywhere the ship touched, and continued our course till we came to an island as it were a garth of the garden of Paradise.  Here the captain cast anchor, and making fast to the shore, put out the landing planks.  So all on board landed and made furnaces, and lighting fires therein, busied themselves in various ways, some cooking and some washing, whilst other some walked about the island for solace, and the crew fell to eating and drinking and playing and sporting.  I was one of the walkers; but as we were thus engaged, behold the master, who was standing on the gunwale, cried out to us at the top of his voice, saying, “Ho there! passengers, run for your lives and hasten back to the ship and leave your gear and save yourselves from destruction, Allah preserve you!  For this island whereon ye stand is no true island, but a great fish stationary a-middlemost of the sea, whereon the sand hath settled and trees have sprung up of old time, so that it is become like unto an island; but when ye lighted fires on it, it felt the heat and moved; and in a moment it will sink with you into the sea and ye will all be drowned.  So leave your gear and seek your safety ere ye die.”—­

And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.

NOW WHEN IT WAS THE FIVE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-NINTH NIGHT,

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when the ship-master cried to the passengers, “Leave your gear and seek safety ere ye die,” all who heard him left gear and goods, clothes washed and unwashed, fire-pots and brass cooking-pots, and fled back to the ship for their lives, and some reached it while others (among whom was I) did not, for suddenly the island shook and sank into the abysses of the deep, with all that were thereon, and the dashing sea surged over it with clashing waves.  I sank with the others down, down into the deep, but Almighty Allah preserved me from drowning and threw in my way a great wooden tub of those that had served the ship’s company for tubbing.  I gripped it for the sweetness of life, and bestriding it like one riding, paddled with my feet like oars, whilst the waves tossed me as in sport right and left.  Meanwhile, the captain made sail and departed with those who had reached the ship, regardless of the drowning and the drowned; and I ceased not following the vessel with my eyes, till she was hid from sight and I made sure of death.  Darkness closed in upon me while in this plight, and the winds and waves bore me on all that night and the next day, till the tub brought to with me under