The Voyages of Sinbad
The second of his seven voyages — the sleeping giant bird, its egg like a white dome, and the valley where diamonds lie among serpents
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In the great city of Baghdad there once lived a rich merchant named Sinbad, who was called Sinbad the Sailor, because in his younger days he had made seven long and dangerous voyages and come home each time with a fortune. One hot afternoon a poor porter — a different man, also named Sinbad, called Sinbad the Porter — rested on a bench outside the mansion's gate, tired from carrying a heavy load, and sighed aloud at how unfair it seemed that one man should live in such splendor while another sweated under baskets all his life. Sinbad the Sailor, standing at his window, heard him, and instead of taking offense he sent a servant to bring the porter inside. He sat him down, gave him food and wine, and told him kindly that his own riches had not come easily — they had been bought with terror and hardship on the sea. 'Listen,' he said, 'and I will tell you of my second voyage, which was the strangest of them all.'
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On his second voyage Sinbad's ship stopped to let its passengers rest on a beautiful green island full of fruit trees and clear streams. Sinbad ate, drank from a cool brook, and lay down in the shade to rest — and fell fast asleep. When he woke the sun was low and the beach was silent. He ran down to the shore and found the sea empty in every direction; the ship had sailed on without him, the captain thinking him lost or dead, and no one on board had missed him in time to turn back. Sinbad sat down on the sand and wept, certain he would die alone on the island. But after a while he told himself that weeping would not save him, climbed a tall tree to look over the whole island, and set off walking inland to see what fortune — or misfortune — might be waiting for him there.
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Walking inland, Sinbad came to a wide clearing and stopped in amazement. In the middle of it stood an enormous round white dome, taller than any building he had ever seen, smooth and hard as polished stone. He walked all the way around it looking for a door, but there was none anywhere. He pressed his hand against the shell and felt how cool and strong it was, and he was just wondering what sort of building it could be when a great shadow swept over the clearing and the daylight dimmed as if a cloud the size of a mountain had passed in front of the sun. Looking up, Sinbad saw a bird of such tremendous size descending toward him that he could hardly believe his eyes, and he remembered, suddenly, old sailors' tales of a bird called the Roc, strong enough to carry off an elephant — and he understood that the great white dome he had been touching was not a building at all. It was an egg.
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Sinbad hid in the trees and watched the colossal bird settle itself over the egg to roost for the night, its folded wings alone wider than a ship's sail. An idea came to him, as desperate as it was clever: if this bird could fly him off the island, he might survive after all. He waited until the Roc was fast asleep, then crept out, unwound his long turban cloth, and bound himself tightly to one of its great legs, as thick and rough-skinned as the trunk of an old tree. His heart pounded the whole time, certain the enormous creature would wake and crush him without even noticing he was there. But the Roc slept on, untroubled, and Sinbad tied the last knot firm, lay down close against the huge scaled leg, and waited through the long night for whatever the morning would bring, telling himself that however frightening it was to fly, it was a better hope than starving alone on the island.
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At first light the Roc rose from the clearing with a rush of wind that nearly tore Sinbad from his knots, and in moments the whole green island had shrunk to a small patch of color far below. Sinbad clung on as the huge bird climbed higher and higher, over a glittering stretch of open ocean and then over a range of jagged grey mountains, flying so fast and so high that the cold air stung his face and the clouds themselves seemed close enough to touch. He had never in his life seen the world from so far above it, and for a little while his terror gave way to pure astonishment at the sight of it all spread out beneath him. At last, toward the middle of the day, the Roc began to drop lower, circling down over a deep valley walled in on every side by sheer cliffs, and Sinbad braced himself, knowing that however this flight had begun, it was about to end.
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The Roc landed at last on the valley floor to hunt, and the moment it loosened its grip Sinbad quickly untied himself and crept away before the enormous bird could notice him, afraid it might decide to eat him after all. When he caught his breath and looked around, he could hardly believe what he saw: the whole floor of the valley glittered and sparkled, scattered everywhere with diamonds of every size, some as small as grains of sand and others as big as a man's fist. Sinbad laughed aloud with joy and began filling his pockets and the folds of his robe with as many as he could carry. But his joy did not last long, for as he straightened up he saw, gliding between the rocks not far away, a serpent so immense that it could have swallowed an elephant whole, and he understood at once that this beautiful valley belonged to something far more dangerous than diamonds.
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Sinbad ran from the serpent and found a narrow cave in the cliffside just large enough for him to squeeze into, and once inside he found a heavy flat stone and dragged it across the entrance, sealing himself in as best he could. Through the night he heard the serpent's huge body sliding over the rocks outside, searching, and he lay still and silent in the dark, gripping his makeshift stone door shut with both hands and not daring to sleep. He thought of the sailors' stories he had heard of this valley — that no one who came here ever left alive, caught either by the serpents or by the sheer cliffs that could not be climbed — and for a long while he believed he had simply traded one kind of death for another. But toward morning the sliding sounds outside finally stopped, and as grey light crept in around the edges of his stone, Sinbad allowed himself, cautiously, to hope again.
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In the morning Sinbad crept out of the cave and, looking up, saw enormous joints of raw meat come tumbling down from the cliff tops far above, landing on the valley floor with heavy thuds. He remembered, then, an old merchants' tale he had once heard in Baghdad: that men who wanted the valley's diamonds, too dangerous to fetch themselves, threw down slabs of meat so that eagles would carry them back up to their nests, diamonds sticking to the sticky meat on the way, and the merchants would then drive the birds off and gather the jewels from the empty nests. Sinbad saw his chance at once. He filled every fold of his clothing with as many diamonds as he could still carry, then used his long turban-cloth to tie himself firmly underneath the largest piece of meat he could find, lying flat against it and waiting, hardly breathing, for an eagle strong enough to lift them both away.
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Before long a huge eagle swooped down, seized the joint of meat with its talons — and Sinbad along with it — and carried them both up out of the valley to a rough camp of tents on the mountaintop, where a band of merchants had been waiting for exactly this. The merchants ran forward shouting and banging sticks together to drive the bird off its prize, as they always did, and only when the eagle had flown off did they notice, to their utter astonishment, a living man tied beneath the meat instead of diamonds. They had never in all their years of this trade found anyone alive down in that valley, and they crowded around asking how in the world he had come to be there. Sinbad told them his whole strange story, of the Roc and the egg and the serpent and the cave, and to prove it he opened his robe and showed them diamonds finer than any they had ever gathered themselves, offering to share what he had in thanks for his rescue.
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The merchants welcomed Sinbad into their company, and he traveled home with them, seeing on the way lands and strange sights no one in Baghdad had ever set eyes on, including, so he always swore, a rhinoceros strong enough to carry a full-grown elephant balanced on its single horn. He sold his diamonds for a fortune far greater than anything he had owned before his voyage, and so he came home at last to Baghdad, built his grand mansion, and settled into a life of comfort after a journey that had very nearly cost him everything. Sinbad the Sailor finished his tale and pressed a bag of gold into Sinbad the Porter's hands, bidding him come again the next day to hear of the third voyage, which, he said, was stranger still. The porter went home that evening with a lighter heart than he had carried in years, marveling at everything he had heard, and wondering what the next tale could possibly hold.
About this story
- Audience: kids (ages 6–12)
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