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Many Other Fascinating Stories
Of the Magic Horse of ebony and ivory, so fashioned that its rider, by pressing divers buttons, could fly whither he willed. It bore a Persian prince to a great palace in a metropolis girt about with greenery. There he looked into the eyes of a princess and they were enraptured. It befell that they rode away on the Magic Horse, but before they were wed an evil man abducted the princess. The disconsolate prince wandered far and at last he found her whom he loved, and again they journeyed through the air to his home, where they were married with exceeding pomp and live happily.
Of a poor fisherman who drew his net from the sea and found therein but a brass bottle. He cut open the top and there streamed forth a cloud of smoke. It collected, and, behold! it was a genie, so huge that his head was in the clouds. He would have killed his rescuer had not the wily fisherman insisted that never could he have come from the bottle. The silly genie squeezed himself inside, whereupon the fisherman clapped on the top, nor would he remove it until the genie swore to serve him faithfully. This oath it was that led to the finding of the ensorcelled prince with legs turned to stone and the lake wherein swam fish of four colors that had once been men. After marvelous happenings, the prince was made as other men and the fish were men and women. And the fisherman was so rewarded that he was the wealthiest man of his time. Of Prince Camaralzaman and the Princess Badoura, beautiful beyond compare, and of how each saw the other in sleep and was smitten with great love. But when they awakened they saw not each other, for they had been brought together by genii who had carried Badoura out of China to the confines of Persia. Grief so afflicted both that they sickened and were insane from sorrow. Then a messenger from Badoura journeyed far over land and sea until he found Camaralzaman and returned with him to China, where the lovers were wedded. But while they were traveling to Camaralzaman's land he wandered away. Badoura dressed herself in his raiment and passed herself for a man. It befell that she found favor in the eyes of a king and was married to a princess. And Camaralzaman too came to this land and knew not his wife, who heaped honors upon him. At last she revealed herself and was known as a woman and Camaralzaman took also to wife the princess whom Badoura had married and they were happy together.
Of a merchant who, awaiting death at the hands of a cruel genie, was joined by three old men, one leading a gazelle, another two black hounds, and the third a mule. Now it is related that the gazelle and the mule had been wicked wives transformed by magic, and likewise had the hounds been evil brothers. When the genie was told these stories of enchantment, he was so diverted that he spared the merchant's life.