The horse -- "The Black," as he is known -- saves the boy from the sinking ship that takes his father and others to the bottom of the Mediterranean. The boy awakes on the beach, and the Black is nowhere to be seen. Eventually the boy stumbles on the horse, entangled in ropes. The boy frees the horse, and off he runs.
Before the ship went down, the boy's father gave him a small casting of a horse he won in a poker game. The horse is Bucephalus, Alexander the Great's "untamable" horse, and the boy places Bucephalus on a rock and watches the Black race back and forth in the distance. One day he makes an offering to the Black -- a tray of seaweed -- and the horse accepts it.
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