The Voyages of Sindbad (46)

The Voyages of Sindbad (46)

  When night came I slept sweetly, though the remembrance  that I was alone in a strange land mede me sometimes start up and look around me in alarm, and then I wished heartily that I had stayed at home.

  However, the morning sunlight restored my courage, and I once more wandered among the trees, but always wondering anxiously as to what  I might see next.

  I had penetrated some distance into the island when I saw an old man bent and feeble sitting upon the river bank, and at first I took him to be some shipwrecked mariner like myself.

  Going up to him I greeted him in a friendly way, but he nodded his head at me in reply.

  I then asked what he was doing there, and he made signs to me that he wished to get across the river to gather some fruit, and seemed to beg me to carry him on my back.

  Pitying his age and feebleness, I took him up, and wading across the stream I bent down that he might more easily reach the bank, and told him to get down.

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