SINDBAD THE SAILOR
multitude of listeners, came to tell the story of his voyages to Sindbad the Landsman. Now on the fifth day he spoke as follows:
Having sworn that my fourth voyage should be my last, I dwelt in the bosom of my family for many months in the utmost joy and happiness. But soon my heart grew restless in my bosom, and I longed again for the perils of the sea, and the adventures found only in other lands. Moreover, I had become inspired of a new ambition to possess a ship of my own in which to sail afar, and even to greater profit than on my former voyages.
I arose, therefore, and gathered together in Baghdad many bales of rich merchandise, and departed for the city of El-Basrah, where, in the river's mouth, I soon selected a splendid vessel. I purchased this and secured a master and a crew, over whom I set my own trusty servants. Then, together with a goodly company of merchants as passengers, their bales and mine being placed in the hold, I set sail.
Fair weather favoured us as we passed from island to island, bartering everywhere for gain, as merchants do, until at length we came to an island which seemed never to have known the fretful heel of man. Here we landed, and, almost immediately, on sweeping our gaze over the interior, we espied a strange thing, on which all our attention and wonder soon became centred.
There in the distance shone beneath the sun a great white dome. Loud was the talk among us as to the meaning of this. Some said the island could not be uninhabited since a mosque was built upon it; others contended that, as the island was uninhabited, the structure could not be a mosque. A third party, cooling their minds in the shade of the trees, preferred idly that it was probably some huge white rock smoothed and rounded by wind and weather; yet even these, when the discussion became heated, were constrained by curiosity to follow as we bent our steps inland to discover what this strange object really was.
As we drew nearer and nearer the wind-and-weather merchants lost in countenance what they gained in speed, for the mystery
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