The captain could make no reply to this order, the disobeying of which must have proved of such loss to him and his merchants.  He acquainted them with it; and they hastened him away as fast as they could, after he had laid in a stock of provisions and fresh water for his voyage.

They were so diligent, that he set sail the same day.  He had a prosperous voyage to the city of the idolaters, where he arrived in the night.  When he was got as near the city as he thought convenient, he would not cast anchor, but lay to off shore; and going into his boat, with six of his stoutest seamen, landed a little way off the port, whence he went directly to the garden of Kummir al Zummaun.

Though it was about midnight when he came there, the prince was not asleep.  His separation from the fair princess of China his wife afflicted him as usual.  He cursed the minute in which his curiosity tempted him to touch the fatal girdle.

Thus was he passing those hours which are devoted to rest, when he heard somebody knock at the garden-door:  he ran hastily to it; but he had no sooner opened it than the captain and his seamen took hold of him, and carried him to the boat, and so on ship-board.  As soon as he was safely lodged, they set sail, and made the best of their way to the isle of Ebene.

Hitherto Kummir al Zummaun, the captain, and his men, had not said a word to one another; at last the prince asked the captain, whom he knew again, why they had taken him away by force?  The captain in his turn demanded of the prince, whether he was not a debtor of the king of Ebene?  “I the king of Ebene’s debtor!” replied the prince in amazement; “I do not know him, and have never set foot in his kingdom.”  The captain answered, “You should know that better than I; you will talk to him yourself in a little while; till then stay here and have patience.”

The captain was not long on his voyage back to the isle of Ebene.  Though it was night when he cast anchor in the port, he landed immediately, and taking his prisoner with him, hastened to the palace, where he demanded to be introduced to the king.

The princess Badoura had withdrawn into the inner palace, but as soon as she heard of the captain’s return, she came out to speak to him.  Immediately as she cast her eyes on the prince, for whom she had shed so many tears, she recognized him in his gardener’s habit.  As for the prince, who trembled in the presence of a king, as he thought her, to whom he was to answer for an imaginary debt, it could not enter into his thoughts, that the person whom he so earnestly desired to see stood before him.  If the princess had followed the dictates of her inclination, she would have run to him, and, by embracing, discovered herself to him; but she put a constraint on herself, believing that it was for the interest of both that she should act the king a little longer before she made herself known.  She contented herself for the present to put him into the hands of an officer, who was then in waiting, charging him to take care of him, and use him well, till the next day.