ABSTRACT
During the voyage a gale sprang up and our ship nearly took in water. We had no knowledgeable pilot on board. We came to some rocks |86 on which the ship narrowly escaped being wrecked, and then into some shallows where the ship ran aground. We were face to face with death, and people jettisoned all that they had, and bade farewell to one another. We cut down the mast and threw it overboard, and the sailors made a wooden raft. We were then about two farsakhs from the shore. I was going to climb down to the raft, when my companions (for I had two slave-girls and two of my companions with me) said to me: 'Are you going to go down and leave us?' So I put their safety before my own and said: 'You two go down and take with you the girl that I love.' The [other] girl said: 'I am a good swimmer and I shall hold on to one of the raft ropes and swim with them.' So both my companions (the one being Muḥammad b. Farḥān al-Tūzarī, and the other an Egyptian) and the one girl went on the raft, the other girl swimming. The sailors tied ropes to the raft, and swam with their aid. I sent along with them |187 all the things that I valued and the gems and ambergris, and they reached the shore in safety because the wind was in their favour. I myself stayed on the ship. The captain made his way ashore on the rudder. The sailors set to work to make four rafts, but night fell before they were completed, and the ship took in water. I climbed on the poop and stayed there until morning, when a party of infidels came out to us in a boat and we went ashore with them to the coast of Ma'bar. We told them that we were friends of their Sultan, under whose protection they live, and they wrote informing him of this. He was then two days journey away, on an expedition, and I too wrote to him telling 858him what had happened to me. Those infidels took us into a great jungle and brought us some fruit resembling melons. This is produced by the muql tree and has inside it what resembles cotton containing a honey-like substance |188 which they extract and from which they make a sweet called by them tall, resembling sugar. 1 They brought also some good fish.
