"No," the other replied.
"Look at him now!" said the Calif; "for it is to him you speak."
The Arabian, without betraying the least sign of fear or surprise, fixed his eyes on him, and said,—"And you, sir, do you know who I am?"
"No," replied the Calif.
"I am of the family of Zobair," the Arabian continued, "all whose descendants are infected with madness one day in the year; and this is my mad day."
The faster I walked to that part of the town where the yacht lay, the denser became the crowd of people; and I met regiments of foot-soldiers and troops of cavalry scampering in every direction, as if Gottenborg were besieged by a hundred thousand men, or the sun had slipped, when setting, and fallen in the market-place. A fat Swede, who stood demurely smoking his pipe, attracted my attention by the indifference of his manner in the general confusion; and, noting the sagacity of his little, roguish, blue eye, which he blinked as frequently as he blew the smoke, in a horizontal spire, from his mouth, I asked him what the uproar meant.
"Eld, eld," he said; and that was all the explanation I could obtain from him. However, I soon discovered the cause of the hubbub; for, following the direction of the people's eyes, I saw, elevated higher than its fellows from the roof of an older house, an old chimney ejecting volumes of the sootiest smoke, and causing the inmates to toss beds, blankets, chairs, tables, and, even, their darling pipes out of the windows. I immediately understood the alarm of the inhabitants of Gottenborg. A chimney was on fire.
The conflagrations in Sweden and Norway have been so extensive and frightful of late years, that the natives of those two countries regard them as the most dreadful scourges of Odin, Thor, or Frey; and adopt every precaution they possibly can, in their primitive way, to prevent a fire, or to allay its fury when one does break out. I am not surprised at their consternation, for many of the houses are entirely built of fir, which is very inflammable; and a fire must bring a very fearful catastrophe to such a crowded town as Gottenborg where you can shake hands from an attic window with your opposite neighbour.
In half an hour, long before the trumpery apparatus counterfeiting the shape of a fire-engine, or the water-buckets of the Corporation wrenched from the custody of locks and iron gates, could be made to act, the old chimney exhausted itself; and, at the moment when one unhappy broken-winded engine spirted a small quantity of water into a window of the first story only, the house having five stories, a column of clear blue smoke shot straight up, from the chimney-pot into the air, with the quietude and ease of a good joke. The chimney actually seemed to have got up the smoke for a jest. The folks of Gottenborg, however, did not view the matter in the same light as I did; for the bands of the different regiments, that had been called together, by sound of trumpet, to put out the fire, were mustered in a large square, and, in the presence of a vast multitude, played a psalm, in token of the whole nation's gratitude to Heaven, that Gottenborg had been spared the ancient fate of Sodom and Gomorrah.
The wind veering round to the south, had blown the yacht farther from the quay than when I left it in the morning. While conjecturing how I should get on board, D—— came on deck, and said, if I would jump, I should find no difficulty in reaching the vessel. King Philip, of yore, once wrote to the Lacedæmonians in the following manner:—"If I enter your territories, I will destroy everything with fire and sword." To this terrible menace, the Lacedæmonians answered only by the word, "If." I certainly felt like a Lacedæmonian, and gave D—— credit for all the confidence of the Macedonian monarch. I was rowed on board in the jolly-boat.