longside through the foaming surge. The indurated bodies
of my companions were lying about the decks, washed by the water which
poured into the vessel, as she rolled deeply from one side to the other,
presenting her gunwales as if courting the admittance of the wave. "Are
you, then, tired of your existence, as well as I?" thought I,
apostrophising the vessel. "Have you found out at last, that while you
swim you've nought to encounter but difficulty and danger? That you
enter your haven but to renew your tasks, and again become a beast of
burthen that when empty you must bow to the slightest breeze, and when
laden must groan and labour for the good of others. Have--"

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"Holy Prophet! I never heard of people talking to ships before, and I
don't understand it," observed the pacha. "Leave out all you said to
the ship, and all the ship said to you in reply, and go on with your
story."

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The gale lasted for three days, and then it as suddenly fell calm. I
had observed by the compass that we had been running to the eastward,
and I supposed that we were not very far from the Western Isles. As I
surveyed the bodies of my companions, it occurred to me that they ought
to fetch a high price in Italy as specimens of art, and I resolved to
dispose of them as the work of men. Having no other employment, I
brought up the spare planks from below, and made packing-cases for them
all. It was with some difficulty that I contrived, by means of tackles,
to lower them to the hold, which I succeeded in accomplishing with
safety excepting in one instance, when, from the tackle-fall giving way,
the image fell to the bottom of the vessel, and being very brittle, was
broken into pieces. As it was no longer of any value as a statue, I
broke it up to examine it, and I can assure your highness that it was
very wonderful to witness how every part of the human body was changed
into flint, of a colour corresponding with that which it had been when
living. The heart was red, and on my arrival in Italy I had several
seals made from it, which were pronounced by the lapidaries who cut them
to be of the finest blood-red cornelian. I have now a piece of the dark
stone of which the liver was composed, which I keep for striking a
light. As it afterwards proved, almost all of it was valuable, for the