His fifth voyage was interrupted by rocs, whose egg the sailors had smashed open to see the interior of what they took to be a dome.  These birds flew over the ship with rocks in their claws, and let them fall on to the ship, so that it was wrecked.

Sindbad reached shore on a plank, and wandering on this island perceived an old man, very sad, seated by a river.  The old man signalled to Sindbad that he should carry him on his back to a certain point, and this Sindbad very willingly bent himself to do.  But once upon his back, the legs over the shoulders and wound round about his flanks, the old man refused to get off, and drove Sindbad hither and thither with most cruel blows.  At last Sindbad took a gourd, hollowed it out, filled it with grape juice, stopped the mouth, and set it in the sun.  Then did he drink of this wine and get merry and forget his misery, dancing with the old man on his neck.  So the old man asked for the gourd, and drank of it, and fell sleepy, and dropped from Sindbad’s neck, and Sindbad slew him.

After that, Sindbad amassed treasure by pelting apes with pebbles, who threw back at him cocoanuts, which he sold for money.

On his sixth voyage Sindbad was wrecked on the most frightful mountain which no ship could pass.  The sight of all the useless wealth strewn upon this terrible place of wreck and death drove all the other passengers mad, so that they died.  But Sindbad, finding a stream, built a raft, and drifted with it, till, almost dead, he arrived among Indians and Abyssinians.  Here he was well treated, grew rich, and returned in prosperity to Baghdad.

But once again did he travel, and this time his vessel encountered in the middle seas three vast fish-like islands, which lashed out and destroyed the ship, eating most, but Sindbad escaped.  When he reached land he found himself well cared for among kind people, and he grew rich in an old man’s house, who married him to his only daughter.  One day after the old man’s death, and when he was as rich as any in that land, lo! all the men grew into the likeness of birds, and Sindbad begged one of them to take him on his back on the mysterious flight to which they were now bent.  After persuasion the man-bird agreed, and Sindbad was carried up into the firmament till he could hear the angels glorifying God in the heavenly dome.  Carried away by ecstasy, he shouted praise of Allah into the holy place, and instantly the bird fell to the ground, for they were evil and incapable of praising God.  But Sindbad returned to his wife, and she told him how evil were those people, and that her father was not of them, and induced him to carry her to his own land.  So he sold all his possessions, took ship, and came to Baghdad, where he lived in great splendour and honour, and this was the seventh and last voyage of Sindbad the Sailor.

II.—­The Tale of the Three Apples

The Caliph Haroun al-Raschid, walking by night in the city, found a fisherman lamenting that he had caught nothing for his wife and children.  “Cast again,” said the caliph, “and I will give thee a hundred gold pieces for whatsoever cometh up.”  So the man cast his net, and there came up a box, wherein was found a young damsel foully murdered.  Now, to this murder confessed two men, a youth and an old man; and this was the story of the youth.