It seemed sweet at that moment to have Layelah with me, for what could have been more horrible than loneliness amid those black waters?
and Layelah's mind was made up to meet death with joy, so that her mood conveyed itself to me.

And I thought that since death was inevitable it were better to meet it thus, and in this way end my life--not amid the horrors of the sacrifice and the Mista Kosek, but in a way which seemed natural to a seafaring man like myself, and with which I had long familiarized my thoughts.

For I had fallen upon a world and among people which were all alien and unintelligible to me; and to live on would only open the way to new and worse calamities.

There was peace also in the thought that my death would snatch the prospect of death from Almah.

She would now be safe.