foreign countries and company with merchants and hear new things.
So having made up my mind, I packed up in bales a quantity of
precious stuffs suited for sea-trade and repaired with them from
Baghdad-city to Bassorah-town, where I found a ship ready for
sea, and in her a company of considerable merchants. I shipped
with them and becoming friends, we set forth on our venture, in
health and safety; and sailed with a fair wind, till we came to a
city called Madinat-al-Sin; but after we had left it, as we fared
on in all cheer and confidence, devising of traffic and travel,
behold, there sprang up a violent head-wind and a tempest of rain
fell on us and drenched us and our goods. So we covered the bales
with our cloaks and garments and drugget and canvas, lest they be
spoiled by the rain, and betook ourselves to prayer and
supplication to Almighty Allah and humbled ourselves before Him
for deliverance from the peril that was upon us. But the captain
arose and tightening his girdle tucked up his skirts and, after
taking refuge with Allah from Satan the Stoned, clomb to the
mast-head, whence he looked out right and left and gazing at the
passengers and crew fell to buffeting his face and plucking out
his beard. So we cried to him, "O Rais, what is the matter?"; and
he replied saying, "Seek ye deliverance of the Most High from the
strait into which we have fallen and bemoan yourselves and take
leave of one another; for know that the wind hath gotten the
mastery of us and hath driven us into the uttermost of the seas
of the world." Then he came down from the mast-head and opening
his sea-chest, pulled out a bag of blue cotton, from which he
took a powder like ashes. This he set in a saucer wetted with a
little water and, after waiting a short time, smelt and tasted
it; and then he took out of the chest a booklet, wherein he read
awhile and said weeping, "Know, O ye passengers, that in this