Presently, the mother of the two boys, finding that they tarried from her, went searching for them, till she came to the ship and fell to saying, ’Who hath seen two boys of mine?  Their fashion is thus and thus and their age thus and thus.’  When they heard her words, they said, ’This is the description of the two boys who were drowned in the sea but now.’  Their mother heard and fell to calling on them and saying, ’Alas, my anguish for your loss, O my sons!  Where was the eye of your father this day, that it might have seen you?’ Then one of the crew questioned her, saying, ‘Whose wife art thou?’ And she answered, ’I am the wife of such an one the merchant.  I was on my way to him, and there hath befallen me this calamity.’  When the merchant heard her speech, he knew her and rising to his feet, rent his clothes and buffeted his head and said to his wife, ’By Allah, I have destroyed my children with mine own hand!  This is the end of whoso looketh not to the issues of affairs.’  Then he fell a-wailing and weeping over them, he and his wife, and he said, ’By Allah, I shall have no ease of my life, till I light upon news of them!’ And he betook himself to going round about the sea, in quest of them, but found them not.

Meanwhile, the wind carried the two children [out to sea and thence driving them] towards the land, cast them up on the sea-shore.  As for one of them, a company of the guards of the king of those parts found him and carried him to their master, who marvelled at him with an exceeding wonderment and adopted him to his son, giving out to the folk that he was his [very] son, whom he had hidden,[FN#106] of his love for him.  So the folk rejoiced in him with an exceeding joy, for the king’s sake, and the latter appointed him his heir-apparent and the inheritor of his kingdom.  On this wise, a number of years passed, till the king died and they crowned the youth king in his room.  So he sat down on the throne of his kingship and his estate flourished and his affairs prospered.

Meanwhile, his father and mother had gone round about all the islands of the sea in quest of him and his brother, hoping that the sea might have cast them up, but found no trace of them; so they despaired of finding them and took up their abode in one of the islands.  One day, the merchant, being in the market, saw a broker, and in his hand a boy he was calling for sale, and said in himself, ’I will buy yonder boy, so I may console myself with him for my sons.’  So he bought him and carried him to his house; and when his wife saw him, she cried out and said, ’By Allah, this is my son!’ So his father and mother rejoiced in him with an exceeding joy and questioned him of his brother; but he answered, ‘The sea parted us and I knew not what became of him.’  Therewith his father and mother consoled themselves with him and on this wise a number of years passed.