So he went aloft, and when he had come down he said to the captain,
“I saw, on my right hand, fish floating upon the surface of the
water, and, looking towards the midst of the sea, I perceived
something looming in the distance,--sometimes black and sometimes
white.”
When the captain heard this report of the watch, he threw his turban
on the deck, and plucked his beard, and said to those who were with
him, “Receive warning of our destruction, which will befall all of
us: not one will escape.” So saying, he began to weep; and all of us,
in like manner, bewailed our lot. I desired him to inform us of that
which the watch had seen. The watch said, “To-morrow we shall arrive
at a mountain of black stone, called loadstone: the current is now
bearing us violently toward it, and the ship will fall in pieces; for
God hath given to the loadstone a secret property, by virtue of which
everything of iron is attracted toward it. On that mountain is such
a quantity of iron as no one knoweth but God, whose name be exalted!
for from times of old great numbers of ships have been destroyed by
the influence of that mountain.”
On the following morning we drew near to the mountain; the current
carried us toward it with violence, and when the ships were almost
close to it, they fell asunder, and all the nails, and everything
else that was of iron, flew from them toward the loadstone. It was
near the close of the day when the ship fell in pieces. Some of us
were drowned, and some escaped; but the greater number were drowned,
and of those who saved their lives, none knew what became of the
others, so stupefied were they by the waves and the boisterous wind.
After they had looked up the other passages, which are somewhat like
this, in the Fifth Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor, they came back to Sir
John Mandeville. They found the story of the rich man Gathenabes, and
his false Paradise, the same that is told of the King of the Assassins.
This was in the mysterious land of Prester John. They found the happy
story of the “Island of Bragman,” which some men call the Land of
Faith. Then they found the description of the Terrestrial Paradise,
which poor Mandeville could not reach from the East Indies, better than
poor Columbus could from the West.[4] They found about the country
where the gentleman has such long nails that he may take nothing, nor
handle anything.
Then they found--and this was a great relief to Sybil--that after all
these travels, Sir John returned to Rome, and “was absolved of all that
lay in my conscience of many grievous points.” For notwithstanding
Uncle Fritz’s excuses for Sir John, Sybil was sadly afraid that he
needed absolution for the master sin of lying; and if he ever repented
of it, Sybil was glad.
Before she laid down the book she read one extract more.