On the six hundred and fifty-fourth night, Scheherazade folded her hands and said: “Let me tell you, O King, of a young merchant who lit a cooking fire on the back of a sleeping giant, and of what the sea taught him afterward.”
In the port of Basra lived a youth named Sindbad, who had spent his father’s inheritance on fine robes and finer feasts. When only a handful of silver remained, he bought bales of cloth and pepper, joined a company of traders, and sailed east toward lands whose names he could barely pronounce.
An Island Without a Single Shell
After many days of open water, the lookout cried that land was near. It was a low, green island, smooth as polished stone, with no birds on its shore and no shells upon its sand. The captain anchored, and the weary merchants climbed down to stretch their legs. Sindbad gathered driftwood for a fire to boil rice and roast fish.
The flames had barely begun to crackle when the ground gave a long, low shiver. Pots tipped over. Then the whole island rolled, as a sleeper rolls when a spark lands on his skin. From the deck the captain shouted, “Run, brothers! This is no island but a whale who has slept so long that grass grew on his back!”
The merchants scrambled for the boat. Most reached it. Sindbad, still holding his ladle, did not. The whale dived, and the sea swallowed the fire, the rice and the young man’s pride all at once.
A Washtub and a Kinder Shore
Sindbad caught a wooden washtub that bobbed past and clung to it through a night and a day. The waves carried him to a real island where the grooms of King Mihrjan were watering the royal horses. They gave him bread, a dry cloak and a place beside their fire, asking nothing in return.
Later Sindbad served the king at the harbor, recording every ship that came and went. One morning his own lost ship sailed in, and the captain wept and returned his bales untouched. Sindbad sold half his goods and shared the profit with the grooms who had first fed him.
Scheherazade looked at the King. “The ground we trust most, my lord, may be the one that has never been tested. Wise is the traveler who checks the shore for shells, and wiser still is the one who repays the hands that pulled him from the sea.”
And as dawn brightened the lattice, she fell silent, promising another wonder for the coming night.
