The fisherman at once brought the fish, and the King, after ordering
them to give him four hundred gold pieces, turned to the Wazir and
said, "Up, and fry me the fishes here before me!" The Minister,
replying, "To hear is to obey," bade bring the frying pan, threw
therein the cleansed fish, and set it over the fire, when lo! the wall
clave asunder, and out burst a black slave like a huge rock or a
remnant of the tribe Ad, bearing in hand a branch of a green tree. And
he cried in loud and terrible tones, "O fish! O fish! Be ye an
constant to your antique convenant?" Whereupon the fishes lifted their
heads from the frying pan and said, "Yes! Yes! We be true to our vow,"
and they again recited the couplet:
"Come back and so will I! Keep faith and so will I!
But if ye fain forsake, I'll requite till quits we cry!"
Then the huge blackamoor approached the frying pan and upset it with
the branch and went forth by the way he came in. When he vanished from
their sight, the King inspected the fish, and finding them all charred
black as charcoal, was utterly bewildered, and said to the Wazir:
"Verily this is a matter whereanent silence cannot be kept.
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