The Three Hundred and Ninety-third Night,
Dunyazad said to her, "Allah upon thee, O my sister, an thou be other than sleepy, finish for us thy tale that we may cut short the watching of this our latter night!" She replied, "With love and good will!" It hath reached me, O auspicious King, the director, the right-guiding, lord of the rede which is benefiting and of deeds fair-seeming and worthy celebrating, that there was a certain eater of Bhang whose wont it was every day to buy three Faddahs' worth of hemp and he would eat one third thereof in the morning and a second at noon and the rest about sundown. He was by calling a fisherman; and regularly as dawn appeared he would take hook and line and go down to the river a-fishing; then he would sell of his catch a portion, expending half a Faddah on bread and eat this with the remaining part of the fish broiled. He would also provide himself day by day with a waxen taper and light it in his cell and sit before it, taking his pleasure and talking to himself after his large dose of Bhang. In such condition he abode a while of time until one fine spring-night, about the middle of the month when the moon was shining sheeniest, he sat down to bespeak himself and said, "Ho, Such-an-one! hie thee forth and solace thy soul with looking at the world, for this be a time when none will espy thee and the winds are still." Herewith he went forth intending for the river; but as soon as he issued from his cell-door and trod upon the square, he beheld the moonbeams bestrown upon the surface and, for the excess of his Bhang, his Fancy said to him, "By Allah, soothly the stream floweth strong and therein needs must be much store of fish. Return, O Such-an-one, to thy cell, bring hook and line and cast them into these waters; haply Allah our Lord shall vouchsafe thee somewhat of fish, for men say that by night the fisherwight on mighty fine work shall alight." He presently brought out his gear and, having baited the hook, made a cast into the moonlit square, taking station in the shadow of the walls where he believed the river bank to be. Then he bobbed[225] with his hook and line and kept gazing at the waters, when behold! a big dog sniffed the bait and coming up to it swallowed the hook till it stuck in his gullet.[226] The beast feeling it prick his throttle yelped with pain and made more noise every minute, rushing about to the right and the left: so the line was shaken in the man's hand and he drew it in, but by so doing the hook pierced deeper and the brute howled all the louder; and it was pull Bhang-eater and pull cur. But the man dared not draw near the moonlight, holding it to be the river, so he tucked up his gown to his hip-bones, and as the dog pulled more lustily he said in his mind, "By Allah this must be a mighty big fish and I believe it to be a ravenous."[227] Then he gripped the line firmly and haled it in but the dog had the better of him and dragged him to the very marge of the moonlight; so the fisherman waxed afraid and began to cry, "Alack! Alack! Alack![228] To my rescue ye braves![229] Help me for a monster of the deep would drown me! Yállah, hurry ye, my fine fellows, hasten to my aid!" Now at that hour people were enjoying the sweets of sleep and when they heard these unseasonable outcries they flocked about him from every side and accosting him asked, "What is it? What maketh thee cry aloud at such an hour? What hath befallen thee?" He answered, "Save me, otherwise a river-monster will cause me fall into the stream and be drowned." Then, finding him tucked up to the hips, the folk approached him and enquired, "Where is the stream of which thou speakest?" and he replied, "Yonder's the river; be ye all blind?" Thereat they understood that he spoke of the moonbeams, whose sheen was dispread upon earth, deeming it a river-surface, and they told him this; but he would not credit them and cried, "So ye also desire to drown me; be off from me! our Lord will send me other than you to lend me good aid at this hour of need." They replied, "O well-born one, this be moonshine;" but he rejoined, "Away from me, ye low fellows,[230] ye dogs!" They derided him and the angrier he grew the more they laughed, till at last they said one to other, "Let us leave him and wend our ways," and they quitted him in such condition?And Shahrazad was surprised by the dawn of day and fell silent and ceased saying her permitted say. Then quoth her Sister Dunyazad, "How sweet and tasteful is thy tale, O sister mine, and enjoyable and delectable!" Quoth she, "And where is this compared with that I would relate to you on the coming night an the Sovran suffer me to survive?" Now when it was the next night and that was