Arr. Ye say ye wants to hear the tail of Sinbad, does ye? Bring that bottle closer and
I'll be seein' what I can do for ye.
That Sinbad, he were a mighty sailor in the seas of Arabee, and tho they don't tell it so,
he done some plunderin' in his time. Gathered heaps o' money and such, and had a regular
gang o' wenches like they do there. Soon enough he's wonderin' why he risks life and limb
just to get more o' what he's already got, and settles down in some manse somewhere to live
the fat life.
Well, it 'pears that after some time one o' the wenches done gone and made up a bunch of
stories about Sinbad's doin's. Cleaned it up, she did and made it all such that it wouldn't
scare the blood out of a livin' man, as it most likely would if told to rights. People
loved hearin' these things, and they was printed and even put in the fancy theatres.
Now it come that ol' Sinbad was famous - couldn't leave his house without bein' mobbed and
gawked at. Everybody was wantin' him to come to their parties and tell about his so-called
'adventures' and what not, and there was even more women than before, and that Sinbad, he loved
the women. It took no time for that attention to go right to his head and swell it bigger than
a week-dead manatee. Afore you know it he's havin' parties of his own, and spendin' that money like it came from a
bottomless chest such as were in one of them stories.
That lasted only so long, wouldn't you know, and one day he wakes up with the money chest right empty and the visser takin' over
his house and all those lovelys gone, gone who knows where. Out on the street he was, flabby and pale and washed up on the beach
like a jellyfish, all on account o' some braggin' woman. Ain't that th' way o' the world.
Sinbad had always been a jolly sort, but this run turned him sour 'gainst man and nature. He
goes back to what he knows and ships out - not as Captain such as he always was before, but now as a
common sea hand, and that sort of life sours him even mores, given what he been used to. Sailors ain't
never known for their kindly ways, but ol' Sinbad kept so awful you could hardly stand to be on the same
deck as he.
It was awhile ago now that he came to these parts and found that his foul visage were so well known now that
no ship would have him, not even the basest pirates. He stayed 'round the port for awhile railin' against
god and mammon until the townsfolk gathered together and stoned him out into the woods, makin' sure he understood
that to come back would be his end.
Time later we hear from an ol' hermit that Sinbad had come by his way and kept goin', climbin' to a high hill
where he staked a lookout. He hunted and fished and per'aps robbed on the road, although noones who claimed
such ever really saw who done anythin' and none has ever found where he kept hisself. It's sure that whatever
might have been taken never came back to surface, since the famous sailor kept from men even more than that hermit.
We did go to see the hermit once awhile back, and he says he knows the lookout and even gives us the spot, which I'm givin to you now
since yer nice and free with that bottle, ye are. He says that he used to see Sinbad in the woods now and again, but not of recent,
and we're be thinkin' he's found cease to his pain. We knows a thing or two about this sort of affair, and it's said that when an
earthly soul is in that sort of torment, he never really leaves this world, even after he breaths his last.
Stay away, says we. Such things is best left alone, as they were in life.