“Thus you spoke to me,” whispered the old sailor, as though again addressing the serpent, who, in the narration of these adventures, had become once more a very present reality to him, “but I heard it not.  I lay before thee, and was unconscious.”

Continuing his story, he told how the great serpent lifted him tenderly in his golden mouth, and carried him to his dwelling-place, setting him down there without hurt, amongst the fruit-trees and the flowers.  The Egyptian at once flung himself upon his stomach before him, and lay there in a stupor of terror.  The serpent, however, meant him no harm, and indeed looked down on him with tender pity as he questioned him once more.

“Who brought thee, who brought thee, little one?” he asked again, “Who brought thee to this island of the Great Green Sea, whereof the (under) half is waves?”

On his hands and knees before the kindly monster the shipwrecked Egyptian managed to regain possession of his faculties sufficiently to give an account of himself.

“I was going down to the mines,” he faltered, “on a mission of the sovereign, in a ship one hundred and fifty cubits in length and forty in breadth, and in it were one hundred and fifty sailors, picked men of Egypt.  They scanned the heavens and they scanned the earth, and their hearts were stouter than lions.  They foretold the storm or ever it came, and the tempest when as yet it was not.  Every one of them, his heart was stout and his arm strong beyond his fellow.  There was none unproven amongst them.  The storm arose while that we were on the Great Green Sea, before we touched land; and as we sailed it redoubled (its strength), and the waves thereof were eight cubits.  There was a plank of wood to which I clung.  The ship perished, and of them that were in her not one was left saving me alone, who now am at your side.  And I was brought to this island by the waves of the Great Green Sea.”

At this point the man seems to have been overcome once more with terror, and the serpent, therefore, hastened to reassure him.

“Fear not, little one,” he said in his gentle voice; “fear not.  Let not thy face be dismayed.  If thou hast come to me it is God who has let thee live, who has brought thee to this phantom isle in which there is naught that is lacking, but it is full of all good things.  Behold, thou shalt pass month for month until thou accomplish four months upon this island.  And a ship shall come from home, and sailors in it whom thou knowest, and thou shalt go home with them, and shalt die in thine own city.”

“How glad is he,” exclaimed the old mariner as he related his adventures to the prince, “how glad is he that recounts what he has experienced when the calamity is passed!” The prince, no doubt, replied with a melancholy grunt, and the thread of the story was once more taken up.

There was a particular reason why the serpent should be touched and interested to hear how Providence had saved the Egyptian from death, for he himself had survived a great calamity, and had been saved from an equally terrible fate, as he now proceeded to relate.