'Consider,' said I, 'that I am a stranger, and ought not to be
subject to this rigorous law, and that I have another wife and
child in my own country.' It was to no purpose for me to speak
thus, no soul was moved at it; on the contrary, they made haste to
let down my wife's corpse into the pit, and put me down the next
moment in an open coffin, with a vessel full of water and seven
loaves. In short, the fatal ceremony being performed, they covered
up the mouth of the pit, notwithstanding the excess of my grief and
my lamentable cries.
As I came near the bottom, I discovered, by help of the little
light that came from above, the nature of this subterranean place;
it was a vast long cave, and might be about fifty fathoms deep. I
immediately smelt an insufferable stench proceeding from the
multitude of corpses which I saw on the right and left; nay, I
fancied that I heard some of them sigh out their last. However,
when I got down, I immediately left my coffin, and, getting at a
distance from the corpses, lay down upon the ground, where I stayed
a long time, bathed in tears. Then reflecting on my sad lot, 'It is
true,' said I, 'that God disposes all things according to the
decrees of His providence; but, poor Sinbad, art not thou thyself
the cause of thy being brought to die so strange a death? Would to
God thou hadst perished in some of those tempests which thou hast
escaped! Then thy death had not been so lingering and terrible in
all its circumstances.
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