you.' Then he took a staff and laying hold of the children, fell
to beating them and flogging them, whilst they wept, and the
sailors came round about them and said, 'The boys of this island
are all thieves and robbers.' Then, of the greatness of the
merchant's wrath, he swore that, if they brought not out the
purse, he would drown them in the sea; so when [by reason of
their denial] his oath became binding upon him, he took the two
boys and lashing them [each] to a bundle of reeds, cast them into
the sea.

Presently, the mother of the two boys, finding that they tarried
from her, went searching for them, till she came to the ship and
fell to saying, 'Who hath seen two boys of mine? Their fashion is
thus and thus and their age thus and thus.' When they heard her
words, they said, 'This is the description of the two boys who
were drowned in the sea but now.' Their mother heard and fell to
calling on them and saying, '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 crew questioned her, saying,
'Whose wife art thou?' And she answered, 'I am the wife of such
an one the merchant. I was on my way to him, and there hath
befallen me this calamity.' When the merchant heard her speech,
he knew her and rising to his feet, rent his clothes and buffeted
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 issues of affairs.' Then he fell a-wailing and weeping
over them, he and his wife, and he said, 'By Allah, I shall have
no ease of my life, till I light upon news of them!' And he
betook himself to going round about the sea, in quest of them,
but found them not.