Now there was before us a high mountain,[FN#200] rising [abruptly] from the sea, and the ship fell off into an eddy,[FN#201] which bore it on till presently it struck upon the skirt[FN#202] of the mountain and broke in sunder; whereupon the captain came down [from the mast], weeping, and said, ’God’s will be done!  Take leave of one another and look yourselves out graves from to-day, for we have fallen into a predicament[FN#203] from which there is no escape, and never yet hath any been cast away here and come off alive.’  So all the folk fell a-weeping and gave themselves up for lost, despairing of deliverance; friend took leave of friend and sore was the mourning and lamentation; for that hope was cut off and they were left without guide or pilot.[FN#204] Then all who were in the ship landed on the skirt of the mountain and found themselves on a long island, whose shores were strewn with [wrecks], beyond count or reckoning, [of] ships that had been cast away [there] and whose crews had perished; and there also were dry bones and dead bodies, heaped upon one another, and goods without number and riches past count So we abode confounded, drunken, amazed, humbling ourselves [in supplication to God] and repenting us [of having exposed ourselves to the perils of travel]; but repentance availed not in that place.

In this island is a river of very sweet water, issuing from the shore of the sea and entering in at a wide cavern in the skirt of an inaccessible mountain, and the stones of the island are all limpid sparkling crystal and jacinths of price.  Therein also is a spring of liquid, welling up like [molten] pitch, and when it cometh to the shore of the island, the fish swallow it, then return and cast it up, and it becometh changed from its condition and that which it was aforetime; and it is crude ambergris.  Moreover, the trees of the island are all of the most precious aloes-wood, both Chinese and Comorin; but there is no way of issue from the place, for it is as an abyss midmost the sea; the steepness of its shore forbiddeth the drawing up of ships, and if any approach the mountain, they fall into the eddy aforesaid; nor is there any resource[FN#205] in that island.

So we abode there, daily expecting death, and whoso of us had with him a day’s victual ate it in five days, and after this he died; and whoso had with him a month’s victual ate it in five months and died also.  As for me, I had with me great plenty of victual; so I buried it in a certain place and brought it out, [little by little,] and fed on it; and we ceased not to be thus, burying one the other, till all died but myself and I abode alone, having buried the last of my companions, and but little victual remained to me.  So I said in myself, ‘Who will bury me in this place?’ And I dug me a grave and abode in expectation of death, for that I was in a state of exhaustion.  Then, of the excess of my repentance, I blamed and reproached myself for my much [love of] travel and said, ‘How long wilt thou thus imperil thyself?’ And I abode as I were a madman, unable to rest; but, as I was thus melancholy and distracted, God the Most High inspired me with an idea, and it was that I looked at the river aforesaid, as it entered in at the mouth of the cavern in the skirt of the mountain, and said in myself, ‘Needs must this water have issue in some place.’