Then the djinn captain went to the vizier’s cabin and told him: “Your eminence, before we can conclude our deal, it will be necessary to follow the demon king to his palace.  Please remember it is essential that you remain disguised in feminine garb at least until tonight.”

So it was that the djinn captain brought out the vizier, who was heavily veiled as a woman should be.  The demon king escorted “her” to the palace and sent his daughter to the ship.  As soon as the demon princess was on board, the sails were unrolled and the dhow set sail toward its home port.  When the demon king found that he had been tricked and that the “princess” was really an old man, he was furious.  He immediately had the vizier executed.  Of course, you agree that was right and proper.

The djinn now advised Ali to load all the bags of gold in a dinghy and take them to safety before the dhow landed.  The sultan would probably reward him as meanly as before.  Indeed, the sultan was overjoyed when he received the demon princess, but when he wanted to kiss her, she refused and said: “First, you must burn the young man who brought me here.”  The sultan eagerly agreed to this and had an enormous pyre erected for Ali.  Poor Ali again hastened to the tree of his djinn friend.

The next day the soldiers took him to the pyre.  But when everything was burned to ashes, Ali emerged more handsome than ever before.  The demon princess, watching from a palace window, admired his beauty and cunning.  She told the sultan: “Before you may kiss me, you must undergo the same treatment as that young man who brought me here.  You too will become a handsome young man like him.”

Angrily the sultan called Ali and demanded to know what medicine he had rubbed himself with in order to survive the fire.  “Just oil,” replied Ali.  So the sultan rubbed himself with ordinary perfumed oil and climbed on the pyre.  The wood was set alight, and the flames flared sky-high.  When they subsided there was nothing left but ashes.  The sultan’s body could not be found.  The demon princess now ruled the country.  When anyone disobeyed her orders, she changed him into a fish and threw him into the sea.