Section 1
As I led a life full of gratification, I was shortly oblivious to the threats I faced in my two earlier voyages. I was exhausted from an indolent life as I was in my budding youthful age, so regaining my courage against the idea of any threats that I might experience, I traveled from Bagdad to Balsora with the grandest merchandise in the country. Therefrom I again went aboard with the traders. We had remarkable deals at the numerous ports where we cast anchor during the extended voyage we went for. A terrible storm crushed us one day as we were in the open ocean. We were taken to some island’s port blown by a storm lasting for a few days. We were forced to moor the ship although the captain was reluctant to stop there. Once we rolled up our sails, he told us that longhaired thugs dwelled in that and some other nearby islands. Although they were only dwarfs they could swiftly raid us as they outnumbered even the locusts. Unfortunately, no fighting could occur against them and in case one of them was slain, the dwarfs would attack and exterminate us.
In grand dismay, our whole group accepted the captain’s accounts, and to our detriment, we shortly discovered that whatever was told was more than the truth. Completely furred with red hair and almost two feet tall, the countless horde of appalling thugs swam to us and shortly encircled our ship. Mounting the ship's sides in a surprising dexterity they came closer and talked in a language incomprehensible to us. In a dreadful fright, we watched all this and we dared neither to shield ourselves nor to utter even a word so that to somehow avert their wicked plan. The ship cable was cut and our sails were dropped quite rapidly. Moving towards the coast and forcing all of us to leave the ship they steered it into the island from where they had arrived. We were obliged to enter the island which is known as a perilous land to stay and is cautiously circumvented by all voyagers. Presently you will learn the reason; as for us, we had to tolerantly endure our trial.
We discovered fruits and plants that would help us survive as long as we were able to, as we walked further into the island. Death was our sole anticipation. In a far-off direction, as we kept moving forward, we beheld a huge mass of a structure and we headed for it. An enormous palace that was well-constructed and had a double-doored gate made of ebony stood before our sight, so we pushed it open. We went into the court and spacious abode with a vestibule cast before our vision. A pile of human bones was on one side, while on the other numerous skewers for frying. Seeing this display we shivered, and as our legs could not hold us anymore being exhausted from our voyages, we dropped on the soil: snatched in dreadful terror we could not move for a long time.
It was already dusk and while we lay in the said miserable manner, the gate of the abode was pushed open with a loud bang, and a terrific stature of a black man, as tall as a palm tree, appeared. His sole eye situated in the center of his forehead looked like a red burning coal. He had elongated and piercing fore-teeth standing out of his mouth as deep as a horse’s one. Upon his breast his upper lip was hanging and his ears reached his shoulders looking like those of an elephant. As for his nails, they were so long and so twisted that they resembled the claws of giant birds. Catching a glimpse of such a fearsome monster we lay breathless as we almost fainted.
We finally regained consciousness and witnessed that he was observing us seated in the vestibule. After examining us thoroughly he approached, put his hand on me, and lifted me holding from the back of my neck. He rotated me much like a sheep’s head in a slaughterer’s hands. Once he inspected me in detail and understood that I was very thin like a bag of bones, he put me down. He lifted each of my fellow voyagers and observed in a similar vein. The captain was the plumpest, so he grabbed him with his one hand, as I would do a sparrow. Piercing a skewer through him he roasted the captain over the big fire he had lit, and thus he prepared his supper to eat in his abode. Afterward, he headed for his vestibule, and the loud noise of his snoring resembling thunder was shortly heard as he stretched and dozed. Although he enjoyed his sleep till dawn, we were unable to have any respite whatsoever, as we spent the night in the most dreadful condition that one could reckon. The monster woke up in the morning and getting up he left while we remained inside the abode.
