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"
"
Oh fy!" said the king.
'No sooner had we got rid of these birds, which occasioned us great
annoyance, than we were terrified by the appearance of a fowl of another
kind, and infinitely larger than even the rocs which I met in my
former voyages; for it was bigger than the biggest of the domes on your
seraglio, oh, most Munificent of Caliphs. This terrible fowl had no head
that we could perceive, but was fashioned entirely of belly, which was
of a prodigious fatness and roundness, of a soft-looking substance,
smooth, shining and striped with various colors. In its talons, the
monster was bearing away to his eyrie in the heavens, a house from which
it had knocked off the roof, and in the interior of which we distinctly
saw human beings, who, beyond doubt, were in a state of frightful
despair at the horrible fate which awaited them. We shouted with all our
might, in the hope of frightening the bird into letting go of its prey,
but it merely gave a snort or puff, as if of rage and then let fall upon
our heads a heavy sack which proved to be filled with sand!'"
"Stuff!" said the king.
"'It was just after this adventure that we encountered a continent of
immense extent and prodigious solidity, but which, nevertheless, was
supported entirely upon the back of a sky-blue cow that had no fewer
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