When the sun rose I crept down from the tree with hardly a hope of
escaping the dreadful fate which had over-taken my comrades; but life
is sweet, and I determined to do all I could to save myself. All day
long I toiled with frantic haste and collected quantities of dry
brushwood, reeds and thorns, which I bound with faggots, and making a
circle of them under my tree I piled them firmly one upon another until
I had a kind of tent in which I crouched like a mouse in a hole when
she sees the cat coming. You may imagine what a fearful night I
passed, for the snake returned eager to devour me, and glided round and
round my frail shelter seeking an entrance. Every moment I feared that
it would succeed in pushing aside some of the faggots, but happily for
me they held together, and when it grew light my enemy retired, baffled
and hungry, to his den. As for me I was more dead than alive! Shaking
with fright and half suffocated by the poisonous breath of the monster,
I came out of my tent and crawled down to the sea, feeling that it
would be better to plunge from the cliffs and end my life at once than
pass such another night of horror. But to my joy and relief I saw a
ship sailing by, and by shouting wildly and waving my turban I managed
to attract the attention of her crew.