egg the sailors had
smashed open to see the interior of what they took to be a dome. These
birds flew over the ship with rocks in their claws, and let them fall on
to the ship, so that it was wrecked.

Sindbad reached shore on a plank, and wandering on this island perceived
an old man, very sad, seated by a river. The old man signalled to
Sindbad that he should carry him on his back to a certain point, and
this Sindbad very willingly bent himself to do. But once upon his back,
the legs over the shoulders and wound round about his flanks, the old
man refused to get off, and drove Sindbad hither and thither with most
cruel blows. At last Sindbad took a gourd, hollowed it out, filled it
with grape juice, stopped the mouth, and set it in the sun. Then did he
drink of this wine and get merry and forget his misery, dancing with the
old man on his neck. So the old man asked for the gourd, and drank of
it, and fell sleepy, and dropped from Sindbad's neck, and Sindbad slew
him.

After that, Sindbad amassed treasure by pelting apes with pebbles, who
threw back at him cocoanuts, which he sold for money.

On his sixth voyage Sindbad was wrecked on the most frightful mountain
which no ship could pass. The sight of all the useless wealth strewn
upon this terrible place of wreck and death drove all the other
passengers mad, so that they died. But Sindbad, finding a stream, built
a raft, and drifted with it, till, almost dead, he arrived among Indians
and Abyssinians. Here he was well treated, grew rich, and returned in
prosperity to Baghdad.

But once again did he travel, and this time his vessel encountered in
the middle seas three vast fish-like islands, which lashed out and
destroyed the ship, eating most, but Sindbad escaped. When he reached
land he found himself well cared for among kind people, and he grew rich
in an old man's house, who married him to his only daughter. One day
after the old man's death, and when he was as rich as any in that land,
lo! all the men grew into the likeness of birds, and Sindbad begged one
of them to take him on his back on the mysterious flight to which they
were now bent. After persuasion the man-bird agreed, and Sindbad was
carried up into the firmament till he could hear the angels glorifying
God in the heavenly dome. Carried away by ecstasy, he shouted praise of
Allah into the holy place, and instantly the bird fell to the ground,
for they were evil and incapable of praising God. But Sindb