“Master, we have caught a robber of the flock, lying by the fold and feigning sleep.”
Now the sleepy master lay with a new bride, and he would not stir.
“Come, master, we have taken a robber,” they cried again. And still he did not move, but the bride rose and came to the window.
“What sheep has he stole?”
They answered her: “None, for we swaddled him; behold!”
She looked down at Tanil with her pleasant eyes, and bade the men unbind him.
“Who guards now the sheep from robbers and wolves?” she called. They were all silent, and some made to go off. She bade them mend their ways, and went back to her lover. When the thongs were loosened from Tanil he begged them to give him a little food for he was empty and weak, but they scolded him and went hastily away. Their shadows were long, a hundred-fold.
Tanil travelled on wings. Yali was to die at fall of night. He hastened like a lover, but sickness and hunger overcame him; at noon he lay down in a cool cavern to recover. No other travellers came by him and no homes were near, for he was passing across the fringe of a desert to shorten his journey, and the highway crooked round far to the eastward. Nothing that man could eat was there to sustain him, but he slept. When he rose his legs weakened and he limped onwards like a slow beggar whose life lies all behind him. Again he sank down, again he could not keep from sleeping. The sun was setting when he awoke, the coloured towers of his city shone only a league away. Then in his heart despair leaped and maddened him—Yali had died while he tarried.
Searching through a thicket for some place where he could hang himself he came upon a river, and saw, close to the shore, a small ship standing slowly down towards the straits from which he had come. Under her slack sail a man was playing on a pipe; with him was a monkey gazing sorrowfully from the deck at the great glow in the sky.
“Shipman,” cried Tanil, “will you give me bread, I am at an end?”