The works of Edgar Allan Poe; newly collected and edited, with a memoir, critical introductions, and notes, by Edmund Clarence Stedman and George Edward Woodberry; the illustrations by Albert Edward Sterner.

THE THOUSAND-AND-SECOND TALE

years of tranquillity at home, I became once more possessed with a desire of visiting foreign countries; and
one day, without acquainting any of my family with
my design, I packed up some bundles of such merchandise as was most precious and least bulky, and,
engaging a porter to carry them, went with him down
to the sea-shore, to wait the arrival of any chance
vessel that might convey me out of the kingdom into
some region which I had not as yet explored.
"Having deposited the packages upon the sands,
we sat down beneath some trees, and looked out into
the ocean in the hope of perceiving a ship, but during
several hours we saw none whatever. At length I
fancied that I could hear a singular buzzing or humming sound —and the porter, after listening awhile,
declared that he also could distinguish it. Presently
it grew louder, and then still louder, so that we could
have no doubt that the object which caused it was
approaching us. At length, on the edge of the horizon, we discovered a black speck, which rapidly
increased in size until we made it out to be a vast
monster, swimming with a great part of its body
above the surface of the sea. It came towards us
with inconceivable swiftness, throwing up huge waves
of foam around its breast, and illuminating all that
part of the sea through which it passed, with a long
line of fire that extended far off into the distance.
"As the thing drew near we saw it very distinctly.
Its length was equal to that of three of the loftiest
trees that grow, and it was as wide as the great hall of
audience in your palace, O most sublime and munificent of the caliphs. Its body, which was unlike that
of ordinary fishes, was as solid as a rock, and of a
jetty blackness throughout all that portion of it which
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