296
Khelifeh, ‘thou art right! Wilt thou share with me, blackskin? Indeed, I have eaten stick to the tune of a hundred blows and gotten one dinar, and thou art welcome to it.’ So saying, he threw him the dinar and went out, with the tears running down his cheeks. When the eunuch saw him in this plight, he knew that he had spoken truth and called to the attendants to fetch him back: so they brought him back and Sendel, putting his hand to his pouch, pulled out a red purse, whence he emptied a hundred dinars into the fisherman’s hand, saying, ‘Take this in payment of thy fish and go thy ways.’
So Khelifeh took the hundred dinars and the Khalif’s one dinar and went his way, rejoicing, and forgot the beating. Now, as God willed it for the accomplishment of that which He had decreed, he passed by the slave-girls’ market and seeing there a great crowd of people assembled in a ring, said to himself, ‘What is this crowd?’ So he elbowed his way through the merchants and others, who said, ‘Make way for Captain Cullion!’ and let him pass. Then he looked and saw a chest, with an eunuch seated thereon, and behind it an old man standing up and crying, ‘O merchants, O men of wealth, who will venture his money for this chest [of] unknown [content,] from the palace of the Lady Zubeideh bint el Casim, wife of the Commander of the Faithful? What shall I say for you, may God bless you?’
‘By Allah,’ quoth one of the merchants, ‘this is a risk! But I will say one word and no blame to me. Be it mine for twenty dinars.’ Quoth another, ‘Fifty,’ and they went on bidding, one against the other, till the price reached a hundred dinars. Then said the crier, ‘O merchants, will any of you bid more?’ And Khelifeh said, ‘Be it mine for a hundred dinars and one.’ The merchants thought he was jesting and laughed at him, saying, ‘O
