The Seven Voyages of Sinbad

Long ago, in a hot and crowded city, a poor porter set down a heavy load outside a fine house and sat on the step to rest. Music came out of the windows. The porter remarked, to nobody in particular, that it was a strange world where one man carried and another played. A servant came out and said that the master had heard him, and would he come in. Inside sat Sinbad the Sailor, who was old and rich and had a face like a map. "You are quite right," said Sinbad. "But you should hear how I came by it. Sit down and eat." He had been young and foolish, he said, and had spent his father's money in two years. So he bought a share in a ship and went to sea. On the first voyage they landed on a green island and lit a fire, and the island moved, because it was a whale, and the ship sailed without him. He came home a year later on a floating trough, with nothing. On the second they left him asleep on a beach, and he tied himself to the foot of an enormous bird called a roc, and was carried over a valley where the ground was diamonds, and came home rich, and spent it. On the third, and the fourth, and the fifth, there were storms and strange coasts and one or two things he did not care to describe over dinner. Each time the ship was lost. Each time he was the one who came home. "How?" said the porter. "I looked at what was in front of me," said Sinbad, "and did the next sensible thing. That is all it ever is." On the sixth voyage he was wrecked under a cliff on a shore of jewels with no way off it, and he found a river running into a cave, and built a raft, and went into the dark, and came out on the far side of a mountain in a kingdom that had never heard of him. And on the seventh he made his last crossing, traded well, came home, and did not go again. "Seven ships," said the porter. "Seven ships gone." "Seven," said Sinbad. "And I would not give up one of the voyages." He filled the porter's cup, and then he filled his purse, and said that a man who carries loads through a city in that heat has courage enough for any sea, and that he was welcome at this table for the rest of his life. The porter came the next day. And the day after. The stories went on for years, and by the end neither of them was entirely sure which parts had happened, and neither of them minded. The end.