During forty days our voyage was prosperous; but on the night of the forty-first the wind became adverse, and so violent, that we were driven at the mercy of the tempest, and thought we should have been lost. At break of day, however, the wind abated, the clouds dispersed, and the sun brought fine weather back with it. We now landed on an island, where we remained two days to take in some provisions. Having done this, we again put to sea. After ten days sail we began to hope to see land; for since the storm we had encountered, I had altered my intention, and determined to return to my kingdom, but I then discovered that my pilot knew not where we were. In fact, a sailor on the tenth day, who was ordered to the mast-head for the purpose of making discoveries, reported, that to the right and left he could perceive only the sky and sea, which bounded the horizon, but that straight before him he observed a great blackness. At this intelligence the pilot changed colour, and throwing his turban on the deck with one hand, he struck his face with the other, and then cried out, “Ah, sire, we are lost; not one of us can possibly escape the danger in which we are; and with all my experience, it is not in my power to ensure the safety of any individual.” Having said this, he began to weep like one who thought his destruction inevitable, and his despair spread an alarm and fear through the whole vessel. I asked him what reason he had for this despair. “Alas, sire,” he answered, “the tempest which we have gone through, has so driven us from our track, that by mid-day to-morrow we shall find ourselves near that blackness, which is nothing but a black mountain, consisting entirely of a mass of loadstone, that will soon attract our fleet, on account of the bolts and nails in the ships. To-morrow, when we shall come within a certain distance, the power of the loadstone will be so violent, that all the nails will be drawn out and fasten to the mountain: our ships will then fall in pieces and sink. As it is the property of a loadstone to attract iron, and at the same time to increase its own power by this attraction, the mountain towards the sea is entirely covered with the nails that belonged to the infinite number of ships which it has been the destruction of; and this at the same time both preserves and augments its power or virtue.