ty cubits"--about fifty
feet--"and his tail was more than two cubits" in diameter. "His skin was
overlaid with gold, and his eyebrows were of real lapis lazuli, and he
was exceeding perfect."

"He opened his mouth to me," he continued, "as I lay on my stomach
before him, and said to me: 'Who brought thee, who brought thee, little
one?--who brought thee? If thou delayest to tell me who brought thee to
this island I will cause thee to know thyself (again only) when thou art
ashes, and art become that which is not seen'"--that is to say, a ghost.

"Thus you spoke to me," whispered the old sailor, as though again
addressing the serpent, who, in the narration of these adventures, had
become once more a very present reality to him, "but I heard it not. I
lay before thee, and was unconscious."

Continuing his story, he told how the great serpent lifted him tenderly
in his golden mouth, and carried him to his dwelling-place, setting him
down there without hurt, amongst the fruit-trees and the flowers. The
Egyptian at once flung himself upon his stomach before him, and lay
there in a stupor of terror. The serpent, however, meant him no harm,
and indeed looked down on him with tender pity as he questioned him
once more.

"Who brought thee, who brought thee, little one?" he asked again, "Who
brought thee to this island of the Great Green Sea, whereof the (under)
half is waves?"

On his hands and knees before the kindly monster the shipwrecked
Egyptian managed to regain possession of his faculties sufficiently to
give an account of himself.

"I was going down to the mines," he faltered, "on a mission of the
sovereign, in a ship one hundred and fifty cubits in length and forty in
breadth, and in it were one hundred and fifty sailors, picked men of
Egypt. They scanned the heavens and they scanned the earth, and their
hearts were stouter than lions. They foretold the storm or ever it came,
and the tempest when as yet it was not. Every one of them, his heart was
stout and his arm strong beyond his fellow. There was none unproven
amongst them. The storm arose while that we were on the Great Green Sea,
before we touched land; and as we sailed it redoubled (its strength),
and the waves thereof were eight cubits. There was a plank of wood to
which I clung. The ship perished, and of them that were in her not one
was left saving me alone, who now am at your side. And I was brought to
this island by the waves of the Great Green Sea."