Story embodies more than one other adventure belonging
to the History of Sindbad.[5] The Duke and his comrades, navigating in
some unknown ramification of the Euxine, fall within the fatal attraction
of the Magnet Mountain. Hurried by this augmenting force, their ship is
described as crashing through the rotten forest of masts already drawn to
their doom: -
"Et ferit impulsus majoris verbere montem
Quam si diplosas impingat machina turres."
There they starve, and the dead are deposited on the lofty poop to be
carried away by the daily visits of the gryphons: -
- "Quae grifae membra leonis
Et pennas aquilae simulantes unguibus atris
Tollentes miseranda suis dant prandia pullis."
When only the Duke and six others survive, the wisest of the party
suggests the scheme which Rabbi Benjamin has related: -
- "Quaeramus tergora, et armis
Vestiti prius, optatis volvamur in illis,
Ut nos tollentes mentita cadavera Grifae
Pullis objiciant, a queis facientibus armis
Et cute dissuta, nos, si volet, Ille Deorum
Optimus eripiet."
Which scheme is successfully carried out. The wanderers then make a raft
on which they embark on a river which plunges into a cavern in the heart
of a mountain; and after a time they emerge in the country of Arimaspia
inhabited by the Cyclopes; and so on.
