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choke me and I should die.’ ‘Have no fear for that,’ replied the other; ‘for I will bring thee an ointment, wherewith when thou hast anointed thy body, the water will do thee no hurt, though thou shouldst pass the rest of thy life going about in the sea; and thou shalt lie down and rise up in the sea and nought shall harm thee.’ ‘If the case be so,’ said the fisherman, ‘well and good; but bring me the ointment, so I may make proof of it.’ ‘So be it,’ answered the merman and taking the basket, disappeared in the sea.
After awhile, he returned with an ointment, as it were the fat of oxen, yellow as gold and sweet of savour. ‘What is this, O my brother?’ asked the fisherman. ‘It is the liver-fat of a kind of fish called the dendan,’[1] answered the merman, ‘which is the biggest of all fish and the fellest of our foes. Its bulk is greater than that of any beast of the land, and were it to meet a camel or an elephant, it would swallow it at one mouthful.’ ‘O my brother,’ asked Abdallah, ‘what eateth this baleful [beast]?’ ‘It eateth of the beasts of the sea,’ replied the merman. ‘Hast thou not heard the byword, “Like the fishes of the sea: the strong eateth the weak?”’
‘True,’ answered the fisherman; ‘but have you many of these dendans in the sea?’ And the other said, ‘Yes, there be many of them with us. None can tell their tale save God the Most High.’ Quoth Abdallah, ‘Verily, I fear lest, if I go down with thee into the sea, one of these beasts fall in with me and devour me.’ ‘Have no fear,’ replied the merman. ‘When it sees thee, it will know thee for a son of Adam and will fear thee and flee. It feareth none in the sea as it feareth a son of Adam; for that, if it eat him, it dieth forthright, because his flesh is
- ↑ The dictionaries are silent as to this fish, which appears to be a fabulous monster, partaking of the attributes of the shark and the cachalot or sperm-whale.
