The Seven Voyages of Sinbad - The Second Voyage

THE SECOND VOYAGE

Upon returning from his first voyage, Sinbad promised himself that he would spend the rest of his days resting in his home city of Baghdad. However, he soon became bored of this life and decided to go out to sea again with a group of fellow merchants.

Sinbad and his merchants travelled the seas and traded with a variety of people from many lands. That was until they landed upon an island that did not have any people, or really anything at all.

While the other merchants of his ship scavenged the island for fruits and flowers, Sinbad lay in a spot of shade and fell asleep. When Sinbad woke up, he found himself alone… and his ship gone!

After desperately looking for a way to escape the island, Sinbad found a massive white object on the island.

It was so far away that Sinbad could not make out exactly what it was supposed to be. Sinbad began to walk towards it.

What the white object ended up being was a big white ball, that was unusually smooth.

Suddenly; a big, black shadow descended upon Sinbad and the island. Sinbad looked up in amazement to see a massive bird fly over him – this white round thing must be its egg!

The bird swooped down to wrap the egg in its wings, keeping it warm. Sinbad was right beside the bird and its egg, hoping that the bird would not see him. He could not stop looking at one of the bird’s talons, which was as big as a tree trunk.

Then, that was when he realized!

Sinbad quickly unfolded his turban and tied a part of it to the massive bird’s talon. He hoped that when the bird would fly away; it would take him along, and he could make his way out of this island and back to Baghdad.

Sinbad had to wait until sunrise for the bird to take flight. When it did, he held onto his end of the turban as tightly as he could. The bird took him to a faraway island.

There, Sinbad quickly untied his turban from the bird and hid until the bird left. While peaking through the bush he was hiding behind, he watched the bird snack on some monstrously huge snakes before flying away.

That was when he noticed that maybe he would have been better off staying on the island with the huge bird egg.

He was in the middle of nowhere! He was surrounded by mountains that reached the top of the sky, with slopes so slippery that there was no way he could climb them.

As Sinbad anxiously looked around in hopes of finding a way to escape this island, he discovered that the ground was covered in diamonds.

However; along with these diamonds, there were just as many snakes, in which the smallest of them could eat a whole elephant. However; most of them hid in caves during the day, probably due to their fear of that massive bird that would come every morning.

Sinbad knew he had to escape. He started out by picking up the largest diamonds he could find in the valley, keeping him in the wallet he had attached to his belt.

Then; he took out a piece of dried meat he had with him, which he attached to the back of his head with his turban.

He stood quietly, bracing for what was to come. That was when he heard the flapping of wings behind him, which got louder and louder as they descended towards him. He heard something bite into the meat he had attached to his head; it was another massive bird.

It took him to its nest, which contained the merchants he was just travelling with! They too had collected a lot of diamonds.

He explained to them his journey, from the massive egg to attaching a slab of meat to his head. Apparently, they did the same thing to get up here.

Sinbad and the other merchants soon began their journey back home to Baghdad, many diamonds richer.

The first thing Sinbad did when he got home was sell much of his diamonds to make enough money to give to the poor, in addition to keeping him financially comfortable for many years to come.