She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that Sindbad the
Seaman continued:--When they left me in the cavern with my dead
wife and, closing the mouth of the pit, went their ways, I looked
about me and found myself in a vast cave full of dead bodies,
that exhaled a fulsome and loathsome smell and the air was heavy
with the groans of the dying. Thereupon I fell to blaming myself
for what I had done, saying, "By Allah, I deserve all that hath
befallen me and all that shall befal me! What curse was upon me
to take a wife in this city? There is no Majesty and there is no
Might save in Allah, the Glorious, the Great! As often as I say,
I have escaped from one calamity, I fall into a worse. By Allah,
this is an abominable death to die! Would Heaven I had died a
decent death and been washed and shrouded like a man and a
Moslem. Would I had been drowned at sea or perished in the
mountains! It were better than to die this miserable death!" And
on such wise I kept blaming my own folly and greed of gain in
that black hole, knowing not night from day; and I ceased not to
ban the Foul Fiend and to bless the Almighty Friend. Then I threw
myself down on the bones of the dead and lay there, imploring
Allah's help and in the violence of my despair, invoking death
which came not to me, till the fire of hunger burned my stomach
and thirst set my throat aflame when I sat up and feeling for the
bread, ate a morsel and upon it swallowed a mouthful of water.
After this, the worst night I ever knew, I arose, and exploring
the cavern, found that it extended a long way with hollows in its
sides; and its floor was strewn with dead bodies and rotten
bones, that had lain there from olden time. So I made myself a
place in a cavity of the cavern, afar from the corpses lately
thrown down and there slept. I abode thus a long while, till my