No sooner had
we come to an anchor, than we were boarded by officers from the
King of the city; who said to the merchants, "Our King gives you
joy of your safety and sends you this scroll of paper, on which
each one of you is to write a line. For know that the King's
Vizier, who was an excellent penman, is dead and the King has
sworn a solemn oath that he will make none Vizier in his stead
who cannot write like him." Then they gave them a scroll, ten
cubits long by one wide, and each of the merchants, who could
write, wrote a line therein: after which I rose and snatched the
scroll from their hands, and they cried out at me and rated me,
fearing that I would tear it or throw it into the sea. But I made
signs that I would write; whereat they marvelled, saying, "We
never saw an ape write!" And the captain said to them, "Let him
alone; if he scrabble, we will drive him away and kill him; but
if he write well, I will adopt him as my son, for I never saw so
intelligent and well-mannered an ape; and would God my son had
his sense and good breeding!" So I took the pen and dipping it in
the inkhorn, wrote in an epistolary hand the following verses:
Time hath recorded the virtues of the great: But thine have
remained unchronicled till now.
May God not orphan the human race of thee, For sire and mother of
all good deeds art thou.
Then I wrote the following in a running hand:
Thou hast a pen whose use confers good gifts on every clime; Upon
all creatures of the world its happy favours fall.
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