seen in all our lives. My companions ate of it, for stress of
hunger, but my stomach revolted from it and I would not eat; and
my refraining from it was, by Allah's favour, the cause of my
being alive till now: for no sooner had my comrades tasted of it
than their reason fled and their condition changed and they began
to devour it like madmen possessed of an evil spirit. Then the
savages gave them to drink of cocoa-nut oil and anointed them
therewith; and straightway after drinking thereof, their eyes
turned into their heads and they fell to eating greedily, against
their wont. When I saw this, I was confounded and concerned for
them, nor was I less anxious about myself, for fear of the naked
folk. So I watched them narrowly, and it was not long before I
discovered them to be a tribe of Magian cannibals whose King was
a Ghul.[FN#42] All who came to their country or whoso they caught
in their valleys or on their roads they brought to this King and
fed them upon that food and anointed them with that oil,
whereupon their stomachs dilated that they might eat largely,
whilst their reason fled and they lost the power of thought and
became idiots. Then they stuffed them with cocoa-nut oil and the
aforesaid food, till they became fat and gross, when they
slaughtered them by cutting their throats and roasted them for
the King's eating; but, as for the savages themselves, they ate
human flesh raw.[FN#43] When I saw this, I was sore dismayed for
myself and my comrades, who were now become so stupefied that
they knew not what was done with them and the naked folk
committed them to one who used every day to lead them out and
pasture them on the island like cattle. And they wandered amongst
the trees and rested at will, thus waxing very fat. As for me, I
wasted away and became sickly for fear and hunger and my flesh
shrivelled on my bones; which when the savages saw, they left me