16
The king one day said to me, “Sindbad, I love thee, and all my subjects follow my example, and value thee according to thy merits. I wish to make thee one of my subjects. Thou must marry, and settle in my dominions.
He gave me one of his ladies of the court, who was young, noble, rich, beautiful, and virtuous. The marriage eeremonies being over, we retired to a place belonging to my wife, where we lived in great harmony and eontentment.
Yet notwithstanding the happiness I enjoyed, I could not forbear to think of my native country, and to wish I might behold it once more.
I had contracted a strict intimacy with one of my neighbours, and one day as I was sitting down to dinner I was informed his wife had just died. I immediately hastened to afford him some consolation under his misfortune. “Alas!” said he “What comfort can I take who have not above an hour to live? It is the established laws of this country, that the living husband shall be interred with the dead wife, and the living wife with the dead husband. Nothing therefore can save me: every one must submit to this law.”
I went home, deeply affected, and day and night I thought of nothing but how to effect my escape. But while I was forming a thousand projccts to escape this evil, my worst fears wero verified—my wife fell sick and died. You may easily judge of my sorrow when I beheld the preparations for my own funeral, at which the king and his whole court, to show their regard for me, intended to assist.
The corpse, in her most magnificent apparel, was put into her eoffin, and the cavalcade began. I went next the corpse, with my eyes full of tears and my heart bursting with despair. When we arrived at the mountain I eould no longer eontain my anguish, and throwing myself at the feet of the king, I besought him in the most moving terms, to have eompassion on me and spare my life. But all I said was to no effect, no ono was moved by it; they only made the greater haste to let my wife into the pit, and the next moment I was put down after her in an open eoffin, with a vessel of water and seven loaves. They then eovered up the pit, in despite of my grief and eries.
It was a long cave, many fathoms deep. I immediately smelt an insufferable stench from the multitude of dead bodies I saw on the right and left; nay, I faneied I heard some of them sigh and groan. I lived for some days upon my bread and water, which being all spent, I prepared for death.
Having wandered very far into the cave, I lay down on the ground, wishing only for a speedy end to my misery. On a sudden I heard something walking and panting very hard, close beside
