240 Be The Fourth Voyage of

 

do the like. When all was ready for the ceremony, the corpse was
put into a coffin, with all her jewels and magnificent apparel.
The cavalcade began, and, as second actor in this doleful tragedy,
I went next to the corpse, with my eyes full of tears, bewailing my
deplorable fate. Before I came to the mountain, I addressed myself
to the king, in the first place, and then to all those who were round
me, and bowing before them to the earth to kiss the border of
their garments, I prayed them to have compassion upon me,
‘Consider, said I, ‘that I am a stranger, and ought not to be
subject to this rigorous law, and that I have another wife and
child in my own country.’ It was to no purpose for me to’ speak
thus, no soul was moved at it; on the contrary, they made haste
to let down my wife’s corpse into the pit, and put me down the
next moment in an open coffin, with a vessel full of water and
seven loaves. In short, the fatal ceremony being performed, they
covered up the mouth of the pit, notwithstanding the excess of my
grief and my lamentable cries.

As I came near the bottom, I discovered, by help of the little
light that came from above, the nature of this subterranean place ; it
was a vast long cave, and might be about fifty fathoms deep: I
‘immediately smelt an insufferable stench proceeding from the
multitude of corpses which I saw on the right and left; nay, I
fancied that I heard some of them sigh out their last: Hogerce
when I got down, I immediately left my coffin, and, getting at a
distance from the corpses, lay down upon the ground, where I
stayed a long time, bathed in tears. Then reflecting on my sad
lot, ‘It is true, said I, ‘that God disposes all things » according
to the decrees of His providence; but, poor Sinbad, art not thou
thyself the cause of thy being brought to die so strange a death?
Would to God thou hadst perished in some of those tempests which
‘thou hast escaped! Then thy death had not been so lingering
and terrible in all its circumstances. But thou. hast drawn all’ this: