far off, and must, at all events, soon join me.  In that expectation I walked my panting Lithuanian to a spring in this market place, and let him drink.  He drank uncommonly, with an eagerness not to be satisfied, but natural enough; for when I looked round for my men, what should I see, gentlemen! the hind part of the poor creature—­croup and legs—­were missing, as if he had been cut in two, and the water ran out as it came in, without refreshing or doing him any good!  How it could have happened was quite a mystery to me, till I returned with him to the town gate.  There I saw that when I rushed in pell-mell with the flying enemy, they had dropped the portcullis (a heavy falling door, with sharp spikes at the bottom, let down suddenly to prevent the entrance of an enemy into a fortified town) unperceived by me, which had totally cut off his hind part, that still lay quivering on the outside of the gate.  It would have been an irreparable loss, had not our farrier contrived to bring both parts together while hot.  He sewed them up with sprigs and young shoots of laurels that were at hand; the wound healed, and, what could not have happened but to so glorious a horse, the sprigs took root in his body, grew up, and formed a bower over me; so that afterwards I could go upon many other expeditions in the shade of my own and my horse’s laurels.

[Illustration:  THE HIND PART OF THE POOR CREATURE WAS MISSING]

VI

Success was not always with me.  I had the misfortune to be overpowered by numbers, to be made prisoner of war; and, what is worse, but always usual among the Turks, to be sold for a slave.  In that state of humiliation my daily task was not very hard and laborious, but rather singular and irksome.  It was to drive the Sultan’s bees every morning to their pasture grounds, to attend them all day long, and against night to drive them back to their hives.  One evening I missed a bee, and soon observed that two bears had fallen upon her to tear her to pieces for the honey she carried.  I had nothing like an offensive weapon in my hands but the silver hatchet, which is the badge of the Sultan’s gardeners and farmers.  I threw it at the robbers, with an intention to frighten them away, and set the poor bee at liberty; but, by an unlucky turn of my arm, it flew upwards, and continued rising till it reached the moon.  How should I recover it? how fetch it down again?  I recollected that Turkey-beans grow very quick, and run up to an astonishing height.  I planted one immediately; it grew, and actually fastened itself to one of the moon’s horns.  I had no more to do now but to climb up by it into the moon, where I safely arrived, and had a troublesome piece of business before I could find my silver hatchet, in a place where everything has the brightness of silver; at last, however, I found it in a heap of chaff and chopped straw.  I was now for returning:  but, alas! the heat of the sun had dried up my bean;