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Läsebok. N:o 62—63.
27
»Most certainly he was», they replied; »and, as you have
seen hirn so lately, and marked him so particularly, you can,
in all probability, conduct us to hirn».
»My friends», said the dervise, »I have never seen your
camel, nor ever heard of him but from you».
»A pretty story, truly!» said the merchants; »but where
are the jewels that formed a part of his cargo?»
»I have neither seen your camel nor your jewels»,
repeated the dervise.
On this they seized his person, and forthwith hurried
him before the Cadi, where, on the strictest search, nothing
could be found upon him, nor could any evidence whatever
be adduced to convict him, either of falsehood or of theft.
They were then about to proceed against him as a sorcerer,
when the dervise, with great calmness, thus addressed the
court:
»I have been much amused with your surprise, and own
that there has been some ground for your suspicions; but I
have lived long and alone; and I can find ample scope for
observation even in a desert. I knew that I had crossed the
track of a camel that had strayed from its owner, because I
saw no mark of any human footstep on the same route; I
knew that the animal was blind of one eye, because it had
cropped the herbage only on one side of its path; and I
perceived that it was lame in one leg, from the faint
impression which that particular foot had produced upon the sand.
»I concluded that the animal had lost one tooth, because,
wherever it had grazed, a small tuft of herbage was left
uninjured in the centre of its bite. As to that which formed
the burden of the beast, the busy ants informed me that it
was corn on the one side, and the clustering flies, that it was
honey on the other».
Colt on.
42. The first Voyage.
He stood upon the sandy beach,
And svatch’d the dancing foam;
He gazed upon the leaping waves,
Which soon would be his home.
And then he ey’d his sailor’s garb,
With look of proud delight:
The flowing kerchief round his neck,
The trowsers wide and white.
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