“My lord,” she said to Prince Hassan, “I beg of you to come with me into the garden and divert yourself with the conversation of the Pelican who lives there. He is the most wonderful bird, and he assures me that he knows the whole of the Koran by heart.”
When the Prince was made acquainted with the bird he commended the lady’s wit in discovering such a companion, and he gave orders that nothing he desired should be denied him. But, in spite of the honour paid him, the Pelican never ceased to think of the young man in yellow and the melon girl, and to wonder how he could bring them together.
“Lady,” he said one day, “it is long since I looked upon the world. When you are carried abroad in your litter by the banks of the Nile I have a desire to go with you. While you remain inside, veiled, I can put my head through the curtains and see something of the river-life I once knew. If you will allow this my gratitude will not die while I breathe.”
The lady laughed heartily at the strange request, but she did not refuse it, thinking of the Prince’s orders; and, one evening, when the sun was low behind the Pyramids, she set forth in her gilded litter with the Pelican beside her.
While they went along the Nile bank they passed many places where melons were sold, and at last he saw the girl he sought beside a cloth spread on the ground and full of fruit. As the litter passed he stretched out his neck and cried: “The Sheikh’s tomb by the Nile! The Sheikh’s tomb by the Nile!”
She jumped up and would have approached the litter, but the slaves surrounding it pushed her away.
“Full moon!” cried the Pelican. “The Sheikh’s tomb by the Nile at full moon!”
Next day, when the lady came out to talk to the Pelican, he made a new request.
“Lady,” said he, “if you will make me your debtor once more, you will grant me another wish. Send a slave to the young man in the yellow kaftan who keeps a jeweller’s shop in the street of Selim Baba’s Mosque to tell him to go to the Sheikh’s tomb by the Nile at full moon.”
The lady marvelled, for she had fallen asleep in the litter, and had not heard the words he had cried to the girl.