------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Holy Prophet! I never heard of people talking to ships before, and I don't understand it," observed the pacha. "Leave out all you said to the ship, and all the ship said to you in reply, and go on with your story." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The gale lasted for three days, and then it as suddenly fell calm. I had observed by the compass that we had been running to the eastward, and I supposed that we were not very far from the Western Isles. As I surveyed the bodies of my companions, it occurred to me that they ought to fetch a high price in Italy as specimens of art, and I resolved to dispose of them as the work of men. Having no other employment, I brought up the spare planks from below, and made packing-cases for them all. It was with some difficulty that I contrived, by means of tackles, to lower them to the hold, which I succeeded in accomplishing with safety excepting in one instance, when, from the tackle-fall giving way, the image fell to the bottom of the vessel, and being very brittle, was broken into pieces. As it was no longer of any value as a statue, I broke it up to examine it, and I can assure your highness that it was very wonderful to witness how every part of the human body was changed into flint, of a colour corresponding with that which it had been when living. The heart was red, and on my arrival in Italy I had several seals made from it, which were pronounced by the lapidaries who cut them to be of the finest blood-red cornelian. I have now a piece of the dark stone of which the liver was composed, which I keep for striking a light. As it afterwards proved, almost all of it was valuable, for the alternate fat and lean formed a variety of beautiful onyxes and sardonyx, which I disposed of very advantageously to the cameo engravers. I was several days employed in packing up, but I had plenty of provisions and water, and had no doubt that I should be seen by some vessel before they were expended. Three weeks had elapsed, when one morning I went on deck, and saw land on both sides of me. I immediately recognised the rock of Gibraltar, and the Straits, through which I was drifting. I was boarded by a Spanish gun-boat from Algesiras, and having stated that all my crew had died two months before of the yellow fever, I was towed in, put into quarantine for forty days, and then permitted to equip my vessel and procure sailors. This I was enabled to do by selling two of the flasks which held the water, and which, like all the other utensils of the island from which I had escaped, were of pure gold.