the robber
marked with a piece of chalk. Then, well pleased, he bade farewell to
Baba Mustapha and returned to the forest. By and by Morgiana, going out,
saw the mark the robber had made, quickly guessed that some mischief was
brewing, and fetching a piece of chalk marked two or three doors on each
side, without saying anything to her master or mistress.

The thief, meantime, told his comrades of his discovery. The Captain
thanked him, and bade him show him the house he had marked. But when
they came to it they saw that five or six of the houses were chalked
in the same manner. The guide was so confounded that he knew not what
answer to make, and when they returned he was at once beheaded for
having failed. Another robber was dispatched, and, having won over Baba
Mustapha, marked the house in red chalk; but Morgiana being again too
clever for them, the second messenger was put to death also. The Captain
now resolved to go himself, but, wiser than the others, he did not
mark the house, but looked at it so closely that he could not fail to
remember it. He returned, and ordered his men to go into the neighboring
villages and buy nineteen mules, and thirty-eight leather jars, all
empty except one, which was full of oil. The Captain put one of his men,
fully armed, into each, rubbing the outside of the jars with oil from
the full vessel. Then the nineteen mules were loaded with thirty-seven
robbers in jars, and the jar of oil, and reached the town by dusk. The
Captain stopped his mules in front of Ali Baba's house, and said to Ali
Baba, who was sitting outside for coolness: "I have brought some oil
from a distance to sell at to-morrow's market, but it is now so late
that I know not where to pass the night, unless you will do me the favor
to take me in." Though Ali Baba had seen the Captain of the robbers in
the forest, he did not recognize him in the disguise of an oil merchant.
He bade him welcome, opened his gates for the mules to enter, and
went to Morgiana to bid her prepare a bed and supper for his guest. He
brought the stranger into his hall, and after they had supped went again
to speak to Morgiana in the kitchen, while the Captain went into the
yard under pretense of seeing after his mules, but really to tell his
men what to do. Beginning at the first jar and ending at the last, he
said to each man: "As soon as I throw some stones from the window of the
chamber where I lie, cut the jars open with your knives and come