Quoth the boatman, 'Did I
not tell you that the Khalif passed every night? O Protector,
remove not the veils of Thy protection!' So saying, he ran the
boat under an arch and threw a piece of black cloth over the
Khalif and his companions, who looked out from under the covering
and saw, in the bows of the barge, a man holding a cresset of red
gold and clad in a tunic of red satin, with a muslin turban on
his head. Over one of his shoulders hung a cloak of yellow
brocade, and on the other was a green silk bag full of Sumatran
aloes-wood, with which he fed the cresset by way of firewood. In
the stern stood another man, clad like the first and bearing a
like cresset, and in the barge were two hundred white slaves,
standing right and left about a throne of red gold, on which sat
a handsome young man, like the moon, clad in a dress of black,
embroidered with yellow gold. Before him they saw a man, as he
were the Vizier Jaafer, and at his head stood an eunuch, as he
were Mesrour, with a drawn sword in his hand, besides a score of
boon-companions. When the Khalif saw this, he turned to Jaafer
and said to him, 'Belike this is one of my sons, El Amin or El
Mamoun.' Then he examined the young man that sat on the throne,
and finding him accomplished in beauty and grace and symmetry,
said to Jaafer, 'Verily, this young man abates no jot of the
state of the Khalifate! See, there stands before him one as he
were thyself, O Jaafer; yonder eunuch is as he were Mesrour and
those boon-companions as they were my own.
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