so and their age thus and thus." When the crew heard her words,
they said, "This is the description of the two boys who were
drowned in the sea but now." Their mother hearing this began
calling on them and crying, "Alas, my anguish for your loss, O my
sons! Where was the eye of your father this day, that it might
have seen you?" Then one of the sailors asked her, "Whose wife
art thou?" and she answered, "I am the wife of Such-an-one the
trader. I was on my way to him, and there hath befallen me this
calamity." When the merchant heard her words, he knew her and
rising to his feet, rent his raiment and beat his head and said
to his wife, "By Allah, I have destroyed my children with mine
own hand! This is the end of whoso looketh not to the endings of
affairs. This is his reward who taketh not time to reflect." Then
he took to wailing and weeping over them, he and his wife, and he
said to his shipmates, "By Allah, I shall never enjoy my life,
till I light upon news of them!" And he began to go round about
the sea, in quest of his sons, but found them not. Meanwhile, the
wind carried the two children from the ship towards the land, and
cast them up on the sea-shore. As for one of them, a company of
the guards of the king of those parts found him and carried him
to their lord, who marvelled at him with exceeding marvel and
adopted him, giving out to the folk that he was his own son, whom
he had hidden,[FN#158] of his love for him. So the folk rejoiced
in him with joy exceeding, for their lord's sake, and the king
appointed him his heir-apparent and the inheritor of his kingdom.
On this wise a number of years passed, till the king died and
they enthroned the youth sovran in his stead, when he sat down on
the seat of his kingship and his estate flourished and his
affairs prospered with all regularity. Meanwhile, his father and
mother had gone round about, in quest of him and his brother, all