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for we yearn after our people and country and kinsfolk and our homes; so will we never forsake thy service nor that of my sister and her son; and by Allah, O king of the age, it is not pleasant to my heart to part from thee; but how shall we do, seeing that we have been reared in the sea and that [the sojourn of] the land liketh us not?’ When the king heard this, he rose to his feet and took leave of Salih of the sea and his mother and cousins, and they all wept, because of parting, and said to him, ‘We will be with thee again anon, nor will we forsake thee, but will visit thee every few days.’ Then they flew off and descending into the sea, disappeared from sight.
Night dccxliii.After this, King Shehriman redoubled in honour and kindness to Julnar, and the little one grew up and flourished, whilst his uncle and grandmother and cousins visited the king every few days and abode with him a month or two months [at a time]. The boy ceased not to increase in beauty and grace, with increase of years, till he attained the age of fifteen and was unique in his perfection and symmetry. He learnt reading and writing and history and syntax and lexicography and archery and spearplay and horsemanship and what not else behoveth the sons of kings; nor was there one of the children of the folk of the city, men or women, but would talk of the youth’s charms, for he was of surpassing beauty and perfection, even such an one as is described in the saying of the poet:
The whiskers write upon his cheek, with ambergris on pearl, Two lines, as ’twere with jet upon an apple, line for line.
Death harbours in his languid eye and slays with every glance; And in his cheeks is drunkenness, and not in any wine.
And in that of another:
Upon the table of his cheek, a fringe of jet, I wis, The whiskers grow, and sore thereat my soul’s amazement is;
As if his visage were a lamp that burns all night, hung up, Beneath the darkness of his hair, with chains of ambergris.
