At the age of eighteen he had a second vision. This time it was a young
woman, of pleasing exterior. He discoursed with her, on several
occasions, in the grove of laurels and pines known as Alephane; but
what passed between them, and whether it was a woman of flesh and
blood, or merely an angel, was never discovered, for he seems to have
kept his brother monks in ignorance of the whole affair. From that time
onward his conduct changed. He grew restless and desirous of converting
the heathen. He set sail for Lybia, suffered shipwreck in the Greater
Syrtis, and narrowly escaped with his life. Thence he passed onward,
preaching to black nations as he moved along, and converting tribes
innumerable. For three-and-thirty years he wandered till, one evening,
he saw the moon rise on the right side of his face.
He had entered the land of the Crotalophoboi, cannibals and
necromancers who dwelt in a region so hot, and with light so dazzling,
that their eyes grew on the soles of their feet. Here he laboured for
eighty years, redeeming them to Christianity from their magical and
bloodthirsty practices. In recompense whereof they captured him at the
patriarchal age of 132, or thereabouts, and bound him with ropes
between two flat boards of palmwood. Thus they kept the prisoner,
feeding him abundantly, until that old equinoctial feast drew near. On
the evening of that day they sawed the whole, superstitiously, into
twelve separate pieces, one for each month of the year; and devoured of
the saint what was to their liking.
During this horrid banquet a femur or thigh-bone was accidentally cast
upon a millstone which lay by the shore, having been borrowed by the
Crotalophoboi from the neighbouring tribe of Garimanes a good many
years previously and never returned to them by reason, they declared,
of its excessive weight. There it remained till, one day, during a
potent sirocco tempest, the stone was uplifted by the force of the
waters, and miraculously wafted over the sea to Nepenthe. Forthwith a
chapel was built on the spot, to commemorate the event and preserve the
sacred relic which soon began working wonders for the good of the
island, such as warding off Saracenic invasions, procuring plentiful
vintages, and causing sterile cattle to produce offspring.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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