mate." "By Allah," cried I, "this is a most vile, lewd custom and
not to be endured of any!" Meanwhile, behold, the most part of
the townsfolk came in and fell to condoling with my gossip for
his wife and for himself. Presently they laid the dead woman out,
as was their wont; and, setting her on a bier, carried her and
her husband without the city, till they came to a place in the
side of the mountain at the end of the island by the sea; and
here they raised a great rock and discovered the mouth of a
stone-rivetted pit or well,[FN#48] leading down into a vast
underground cavern that ran beneath the mountain. Into this pit
they threw the corpse, then tying a rope of palm-fibres under the
husband's armpits, they let him down into the cavern, and with
him a great pitcher of fresh water and seven scones by was of
viaticum.[FN#49] When he came to the bottom, he loosed himself
from the rope and they drew it up; and, stopping the mouth of the
pit with the great stone, they returned to the city, leaving my
friend in the cavern with his dead wife. When I saw this, I said
to myself, "By Allah, this fashion of death is more grievous than
the first!" And I went in to the King and said to him, "O my
lord, why do ye bury the quick with the dead?" Quoth he, "It hath
been the custom, thou must know, of our forbears and our olden
Kings from time immemorial, if the husband die first, to bury his
wife with him, and the like with the wife, so we may not sever
them, alive or dead." I asked, "O King of the age, if the wife of
a foreigner like myself die among you, deal ye with him as with
yonder man?"; and he answered, "Assuredly, we do with him even as
thou hast seen." When I heard this, my gall-bladder was like to
burst, for the violence of my dismay and concern for myself: my
wit became dazed; I felt as if in a vile dungeon; and hated their
society; for I went about in fear lest my wife should die before