“What did you fall in?” interrupted the pacha. “I don’t know what that is.”
“I fell in a slanting direction, your highness, describing the hypotenuse between the base and perpendicular, created by the force of the wind, and the attraction of gravitation.”
“Holy Prophet! who can understand such stuff? Speak plain; do you laugh at our beards?”
“Min Allah! God forbid! Your servant would indeed eat dirt,” replied Huckaback.
I meant to imply, that so powerful was the wind, it almost bore me up, and when I first struck the water, which I did upon the summit of a wave, I bounded off again and ricochetted several times from one wave to another, like the shot fired from a gun along the surface of the sea, or the oyster-shell skimmed over the lake by the truant child. The last bound that I gave, pitched me into the rigging of a small vessel on her beam-ends, and I hardly had time to fetch my breath before she turned over. I scrambled up her bends, and fixed myself astride upon her keel.
There I remained for two or three hours, when the hurricane was exhausted from its own violence. The clouds disappeared, the sun burst out in all its splendour, the sea recovered its former tranquillity, and Nature seemed as if she was maliciously smiling at her own mischief. The land was close to me, and the vessel drifted on shore. I found that I was at the Isle of France, having, in the course of twelve hours thus miraculously shifted my position from one side of the globe unto the other. I found the island in a sad state of devastation; the labour of years had been destroyed in the fury of an hour—the crops were swept away—the houses were levelled to the ground—the vessels in fragments on the beach—all was misery and desolation. I was however kindly received by my countrymen, who were the inhabitants of the isle; and, in four-and-twenty hours, we all danced and sang as before. I invented a very pretty quadrille, called the Hurricane, which threw the whole island into an ecstasy, and recompensed them for all their sufferings. But I was anxious to return home, and a Dutch vessel proceeding straight to Marseilles, I thought myself fortunate to obtain a passage upon the same terms as those which had enabled me to quit the West Indies. We sailed, but before we had been twenty-four hours at sea, I found that the captain was a violent man, and a most dreadful tyrant. I was not very strong; and not being able to perform the duty before the mast, to which I had not been accustomed, I was beat so unmercifully, that I was debating in my mind, whether I should kill the captain and then jump overboard, or submit to my hard fate; but one night as I lay groaning on the forecastle after a punishment I had received from the captain, which incapacitated me from further duty, an astonishing circumstance occurred which was the occasion, not only of my embracing the Mahomedan religion, but of making use of those expressions which attracted your highness’s attention when you passed in disguise. “Why am I thus ever to be persecuted?” exclaimed I in despair. And, as I uttered these words, a venerable personage, in a flowing beard, and a book in his hand, appeared before me, and answered me.
“Because, Huckaback, you have not embraced the true faith.”
“What is the true faith?” inquired I, in fear and amazement.