small matter and plunged into the waves with such violence, that
the ship pitched high and then sank into the trough of the sea
and the bottom of the ocean appeared to us. Then the she-Rukh let
fall her rock, which was bigger than that of her mate, and as
Destiny had decreed, it fell on the poop of the ship and crushed
it, the rudder flying into twenty pieces; whereupon the vessel
foundered and all and everything on board were cast into the
main.[FN#59] As for me I struggled for sweet life, till Almighty
Allah threw in my way one of the planks of the ship, to which I
clung and bestriding it, fell a-paddling with my feet. Now the
ship had gone down hard by an island in the midst of the main and
the winds and waves bore me on till, by permission of the Most
High, they cast me up on the shore of the island, at the last
gasp for toil and distress and half dead with hunger and thirst.
So I landed more like a corpse than a live man and throwing
myself down on the beach, lay there awhile, till I began to
revive and recover spirits, when I walked about the island and
found it as it were one of the garths and gardens of Paradise.
Its trees, in abundance dight, bore ripe-yellow fruit for
freight; its streams ran clear and bright; its flowers were fair
to scent and to sight and its birds warbled with delight the
praises of Him to whom belong permanence and all-might. So I ate
my fill of the fruits and slaked my thirst with the water of the
streams till I could no more and I returned thanks to the Most
High and glorified Him;--And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day
and ceased saying her permitted say.

When it was the Five Hundred and Fifty-seventh Night,

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that Sindbad the