Storytelling for Week 4: Sindbad's Third Voyage

Author’s Note:

Before Sindbad’s Third Voyage, he has already taken two voyages and had near death experiences on each of them. In the original story, he becomes shipwrecked again this time the island him and his crew are on has a big castle. Inside the castle they find a giant who eats the crew, but they escape by poking its eye out. I have kept the original story except for how the crew actually escapes from the giant. I also chose to keep the same storytelling style as the original, which is in 1^st person from Sindbad.

Sindbad’s Third Voyage

Although I had already taken two life-threatening,voyages, I once again grew anxious and adventure ridden. Much to the dismay of my family, I gathered some beautiful valuables from my homeland of Baghdad and joined a ship of merchants heading out to sea. I made great business trading my goods, but one afternoon a particularly brutal storm had me regretting my decision to head back out to sea. Our ship was blown into a rocky outcropping just off the coast of an island, forcing us to anchor there for the time being. Immediately upon getting on the island safely, we were attacked by a grouping of extremely small savages, all of which had red fur covering their bodies. Being unarmed, we were no match for the savages and they continued past us and onto our vessel. They spent the night there and set sail the next day with all of our belongings. Being left with no choice, we started to walk inland.

Shortly after beginning our walk, we saw a very large castle in the distance and made our way over to it. This castle looked quite inviting to us hungry wanderers, so we opened the large wooden doors and entered. We were immediately horrified to see that there was a large pile of human bones laying inside the castle, then we saw something even worse. Coming from a hallway was an enormous green giant who only had one eye. Having no other option, we all dropped to the stone floor of the castle and laid as if we were dead. The giant slowly walked towards us and examined us one by one. After seemingly careful consideration, the giant recklessly grabbed our captain (who also happened to be the fattest among us) by the shirt and devoured him, spitting out his bones and throwing them into the pile. The giant walked away and did not appear until the next morning, when he left the castle. We were all too scared to leave, for fear of the giant waiting for us right outside the door, so we stayed the day in the castle. The giant came back at sunset and again ate the fattest among us and disappeared for the night.

The next morning when the giant left, we carefully escaped as well and built ourselves rafts on the shore where our vessel had wrecked. Being too late in the day to set sail by the time we finished our rafts, we returned to the castle and once again awaited the giant. He inspected us again and picked up the fattest one, but this time we had him fooled. While the giant was gone, we took some bones out of the pile and sharpened fine points on all of them and then hid them within bales of hay we found outside the castle and dressed them with my own clothes. When the giant picked up our dummy, threw it into his mouth, and took one big bite, he was stabbed by all of our sharpened bones and collapsed from all the blood loss. The giant collapsed and we immediately ran to our rafts.

We safely sailed to another island, encountered even more dangers there where everyone but myself died, and then I was lucky enough to find another merchant ship to get a ride home with. I vowed I would never go on another voyage and began happily spending time with my family.

Sindbad Plots Against the Giant.

Bibliography: 

Story Info: Third Voyage from The Arabian Nights' Entertainments, by Andrew Lang (1898).

Image Info: Sindbad Plots Against the Giant, illustration from Arabian Nights, by Maxfield Parrish (1907). Web Source: Wikipedia