Sindbad the Sailor: The Third Voyage
Also known as Sindbad Jahazi
- 4 minute read
- Ages 9-13
- Alif Laila Stories
Sindbad had said he would stay in Baghdad, and he meant it for about two years.
Then he was at sea again.
Blown off course
This voyage went wrong early. A wind took them off their route for days, and when it dropped they were somewhere the captain did not know, in sight of an island that was not on any chart he had.
He went pale when he saw it.
"I know where we are," he said. "I hoped I was wrong. Nobody who lands here leaves."
They had no choice. The ship needed water.
The tall house
Ashore, the crew found a huge building of black stone standing alone, with a doorway they could all walk through without ducking and a courtyard behind it.
They went in, because it was empty and it was shelter.
At sunset something came home.
It was as tall as a palm tree and shaped like a man, and it went round the courtyard looking at them one by one, the way a person looks over fruit at a market. Then it chose one, and the others did not see that man again.
It did the same the next night.
Sindbad, who had spent both days looking rather than despairing, had noticed three things. There were iron spits by the fire. The creature slept extremely deeply after it ate. And there were logs on the beach.
The escape
On the third night, when it was asleep and the whole building shook with its breathing, the survivors took the spits and heated them in the fire until they glowed white.
What they did then was quick and it was the only thing available to them, and afterwards they ran.
They ran to the beach and they had the rafts half built from the logs and the ropes off the ship, and they got them into the water and pushed out as the sky went grey.
The thing came down to the shore behind them and it could not see them and could not follow, and it threw rocks after the sound of them, and one raft was hit and lost. Sindbad's got clear.
The island after
Three of them survived to reach an island, and it was a good island, with fruit and fresh water, and they slept the first night on the sand out of pure exhaustion.
In the morning there were two of them.
A serpent lived on that island and it hunted at night, and the following evening Sindbad built a shelter of driftwood around himself, wedged and tied, and lay inside it and listened to the thing test every side of it all night and find no way in.
At dawn he went out and made a fire on the highest point of the island and kept it burning.
A ship saw the smoke on the fourth day.
Home
The captain who picked him up was the captain who had left him on the island on the second voyage, and did not recognise him, and was carrying Sindbad's own goods to sell for his family.
It happened twice. Sindbad said afterwards that this was the point at which he began to feel the sea was making a joke of him, and that he laughed about it later than he should have.
Moral of the story
Panic and observation cannot happen at the same time. Sindbad survives every voyage by spending the first day looking at things while everyone else is despairing.
Questions and answers
- Why did the captain go pale when he saw the island?
He recognised it as a place from which no landing party had ever returned.
- What three things did Sindbad notice in the building?
Iron spits by the fire, that the creature slept very deeply after eating, and that there were logs on the beach.
- How did the survivors escape?
They blinded the creature with heated iron spits while it slept, then launched rafts built from the beach logs.
- What danger was on the second island?
A serpent that hunted at night, which killed one of the three survivors on the first night.
- How did Sindbad survive the serpent?
He built a wedged and tied shelter of driftwood around himself, and the serpent could not find a way in.
Word meanings
- chart
- A map used by sailors.
- spit
- A long iron rod used for roasting meat over a fire.
- raft
- A flat floating platform made of logs tied together.
- driftwood
- Wood washed up on a beach by the sea.
Questions about Sindbad the Sailor: The Third Voyage
Is the third voyage frightening?
It is the darkest of the seven, which is why it suits ages nine and above. Nothing is described in detail; the crew members are simply not seen again, and the escape is written in one line.
Is this story related to the Odyssey?
It closely resembles the Cyclops episode in Homer's Odyssey. Scholars disagree about whether the Arabic tale borrowed it or whether both come from a shared older story.
What is the moral of the third voyage?
That noticing is a survival skill. Sindbad spends his first days in every disaster gathering information rather than despairing, and it saves him every time.
Which voyage is best for younger readers?
The first and the fifth. The third and fourth are the two to hold back until a child is older.