The Thief of Kalimar; Captain Sinbad; Cinnabar

by Graham Diamond

“I’ll take that offer,” said Sinbad, standing with his hands on his hips and glaring down at Feisal.

  “And who are you?” asked the promoter.

  “Captain Sinbad of Baghdad.”

  At the name, all eyes turned. Feisal nodded in appreciation of the famed mariner and his known skills. Here was a chance to clean up again, one last really good fight before the night was done.

  “Then so be it, Captain Sinbad. You may retire to the dressing room and prepare. You have ten minutes … ” Suddenly there was great interest in the match. Sinbad’s presence in the ring came as quite a surprise to the gathered sailors from every corner of the globe, but he was one of their own. A man of the sea, a man of courage and skill and wits. Oh, how they would like to see him win!

  And the betting began, every man willing to put his last coins up against the hated Feisal. Sinbad handed Milo his purse. “Here, my friend. Bet it all.”

  Milo stared at him and gulped. “Are … are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  “I don’t want to think about it,” replied Sinbad as he turned to leave for the dressing room. “It would only make me change my mind.”

  Sinbad stripped out of his clothes slowly. While Don Giovanni looked on from the dressing table, the mariner rubbed himself down with oil. Then he sat at the edge of the table and patted the frog gently. “I fear I’ve made a bad mistake,” he ruminated, shivering at the thought of what might come if he were not careful. One good, solid blow from Mongo’s hammerlike fists was all it would take for him to share Ororex’s fate.

  “Perhaps you were hasty in accepting the contest,” replied the frog, “but your instincts were right: This brute can be beaten.”

  Sinbad smiled kindly. “And what do you know of prizefighting? Have you a secret weapon I can use against him?”

  Don Giovanni narrowed his eyes. “I may only be a bullfrog, but I’m not blind. Like every Achilles, even Mongo has a flaw … ”

  Sinbad peered at his friend questioningly. “What are you talking about?”

  “Pay attention to him in the ring,” advised the frog. “The Bruiser leads with his right leg.”

  Sinbad nodded. “I noticed that, too. What of it?”

  “He’s vulnerable. He leaves himself open for a second — a split second — enough time for you to get inside and hit him. And watch, his face twitches when you pass to the right. I’ve seen him swing and miss time and time again.”

  “He’s a brawler, not a fighter. That’s why.”

  Don Giovanni smiled enigmatically. “Perhaps … But I have another guess. The sight in his left eye is bad. Keep moving to the right and you’ll see.”

  Sinbad’s face suddenly was aglow. “He can be blindsided!”

  “Exactly,” said the frog soberly.

  The mariner pounded a fist into his open palm. “If that’s true, then I know just the way to bring this giant down.” Don Giovanni sighed. “I hope you’re right.”

  The cheering began again outside as Feisal called for the challenger to come to the ring. Sinbad put the frog back onto his shoulder and walked outside boldly, his eyes straight ahead, not paying any attention to the jeers and foot-stomping of the Mongo partisans. Milo was waiting for him at ringside, a water bottle and a towel in his hands. He gave Sinbad a small victory sign as he climbed onto the stage, then let the frog sit on his own shoulder while the fighters waited for the bell.

  A loud cry went up from the crowd when it clanged.

  Mongo, seeming more bored than awed by this latest adversary, came out in his usual stance, right foot forward, left fist ready to jab. Sinbad went into his own classical stance as taught to him by the Greeks. He paced around the Bruiser, missing no opportunity to taunt the man with soft jabs into his fleshy midriff. As Giovanni had said, each time Sinbad moved to the right, the Bruiser’s face twitched, his left eye blinked, and he was unable to land a blow. But it was only seconds into the match, and Sinbad knew he still had a long way to go.

  As a test, Sinbad purposely left himself open on the Bruiser’s right, half a pace in front. It was a mistake. The champion of Islam, ill-sighted or not, knew where to deliver, and his right hand came full around, catching the sailor squarely in the solar plexus.

  “Ooof!” groaned Sinbad as he staggered back, gasping for breath. The crowd hooted and howled while he made a desperate effort to hold himself erect and dodge the menacing succession of quick lefts and rights that came whizzing by his ears.

  I’ll not make that mistake again, he vowed to himself as he sidestepped the flashing fists and managed to catch his breath. And, weaving his way inside, always to the right, he somehow held the feared Bruiser at bay, delivering a few well-placed blows of his own at Mongo’s steel jaw.

  The brute grunted, his eyes glaring at the pesky adversary. He let his guard down and grabbed for Sinbad. The mariner landed a fast uppercut solidly upon Mongo’s chin, and for the first time tonight the champion of Islam seemed momentarily dazed.

  Sinbad backstepped, hunching his shoulders, blocking fierce punches and scoring a few glancing blows of his own. The fervor of the crowd rose to new heights as the combatants began to go at it with everything they had.

  “Get him, Sinbad!” cried Milo, excitedly pounding a fist into his hand. Don Giovanni hopped up and down upon the sailor’s shoulder, unable to constrain himself.

  A left, another left and a right, all landed well. Sinbad, well pleased with his effort, had started to outclass his opponent. But Mongo was having none of this. With a terrible cry that frightened the mariner almost witless, he lunged forward, grabbed Sinbad by the arm and flung him to the floor. Sinbad rolled over just in time as a huge foot came crashing onto the mat, splintering the wood. Then he swung his arms low like an ape and, with a one-two combination, nearly lifted Sinbad into the air. Sinbad pitched forward, his head dizzy and a sickening knot tying in his gut. He saw the brute winding up again but he was too weakened to run. One more good blow would do it, one more solid punch would take him out of the match.

  The bell sound. The first round was done.

  Amid roars from the eager crowd, Milo pulled Sinbad to the safety of his corner and sopped water over his head to revive him. Sinbad stared at his friend groggy-eyed. “What … what happened?” he mumbled.

  “You let him get too close,” replied Milo, sponging the mariner down.

  Sinbad panted, sweat poured from his body. He stared across the platform to where Mongo stood calmly, waiting for the second round to start. It didn’t take much to see that the Bruiser was mad, enraged that such a piddling foe had lasted even this long. And that he might endure through round two was inconceivable. Captain Sinbad would have to be dispatched quickly.

  “Remember the strategy,” whispered the frog as Sinbad flexed his muscles at the sound of the warning bell. “Stay to the right, work your way around him!”

  “That’s easy for you to say,” Sinbad replied dourly. “You’re not in the ring with him.”

  And just then the bell rang, signaling the beginning of the second and last round of the match.

  It was do or die. Four minutes to conclusion. Mongo came on like all hellfire, forgetting any pretense of classical boxing and concentrating all his efforts on eliminating Sinbad in the opening seconds by any means.

  Sinbad opened up with all he had, but like a tree trunk, Mongo stood, almost grinning while the hard punches made no impression. Then with a mighty roar the giant of a man lunged. Sinbad twisted and dodged out of the way, feeling the rush of wind by his face as the burly hands came slashing by.

  “Look out, Sinbad,” cried Milo.

  The mariner pivoted back. Mongo came rushing in a half dive. Sinbad adroitly arched himself from range and stuck out his foot. There was too much impetus for the Bruiser to slow down in time to avoid it. His legs tangled and he went sprawling over the mat, hitting the floor with such violence and force that the whole platform shook.

  The crowd went wild with laughter. Mongo, the feared Bruiser, champ
ion of all Islam, lay stretched before them like a clown, brought down by a man half his own weight.

  Livid with rage, Mongo picked himself up. He wiped his mouth with his hand and glared at Sinbad, who stood waiting with both fists at his side. “I’ll kill you for that,” growled the incensed fighter. “Better say your prayers.” And on again he came, his stride cracking the boards underfoot.

  Sinbad could hear Feisal calling from the sidelines for Mongo to kill him. The promoter, eager to protect the good name of his investment, was bent on Sinbad’s demise.

  Mongo opened his arms umbrella-like and grabbed Sinbad before he could pull away. The Bruiser began to squeeze, holding Sinbad in a terrible hug that almost cracked his ribs. And the more Sinbad struggled the worse the hold became. Mongo started to strain all the harder, squeezing the very air out of Sinbad’s lungs. The crowd was in a frenzy, whooping and screaming. With all his effort, Sinbad gouged open the Bruiser’s left eye and poked a finger into it. Mongo cried in pain, loosening his hold just long enough for Sinbad to wriggle out of the grip and slide to the floor.

  The sinewy giant leaped, hoping to crush Sinbad beneath his weight. The sailor from Baghdad scrambled and just slipped from under in time. Then onto his feet he jumped. A second time Mongo appeared the buffoon, bumbling and useless, against this agile adversary from the east.

  The crowd began to boo him as he rose. Mongo waved a menacing fist of defiance at them all and came on again, this time with his mouth foaming and his eyes flaming balls of anger. He smashed at Sinbad, hitting him in the belly, and, while the sailor doubled up, he took his head between his massive hands and began to squeeze. The pressure was excruciating. Sinbad’s face started to turn colors, first to pink, then to scarlet, then to purple.

  “He’s killing him!” cried Milo. “Stop the fight! We concede! Stop the fight!”

  The Bruiser looked to Feisal but the sneaky promoter shook his head. There would be no mercy tonight.

  Sinbad tore his fingers into Mongo’s belly, desperate to make the brute desist before his skull cracked. If only he could twist himself to the Bruiser’s blind side. If only …

  With his last strength, Sinbad managed to turn to the left and free one of his pinned arms. Then he delivered a side-handed Chinese chop to Mongo’s throat, well placed so that raw nerves were battered. Mongo yelped like a stuck pig. Sinbad pushed himself free and charged at him, issuing chop after Chinese chop, each numbing the giant and taking a terrible toll on his nervous system.

  The crowd quieted. Something was happening, something never witnessed before. These strange blows of Captain Sinbad’s were stopping the champion of Islam in his place, causing him to stand dumb and witless, to poke harmless fists into the air, to stare into space like an idle idiot.

  Feisal screamed with bulging eyes for his fighter to do something, to hit Sinbad. But Mongo could not hear. The growling giant tottered, knuckle punches and hammerblows, finger jabs and knife hands pouring over the most vulnerable areas of his body. Kidneys, neck, face, solar plexus. Suddenly he pirouetted, reeling across the platform in a stupor, his mouth hanging wide open and his tongue lolling helplessly.

  And then he fell. The astounded audience gasped. The Bruiser had fallen, come crashing to the mat like a mighty house in an earthquake. His glazed eyes peered up at the ceiling. For a full minute the silence prevailed, no one as much as moving a muscle. Sinbad drooped his fatigued body and looked to Milo and Don Giovanni. The frog smiled.

  “The Bruiser is defeated!” somebody suddenly yelled. And the cry was picked up a hundredfold. “We’ve won! We’ve won!” By the score they jumped from the benches and converged upon the hapless promoter, demanding their money at four-to-one-odds.

  In all of Jaffa’s prizefight history there had never been such a ruckus as happened on that night. Within minutes the word had spread throughout the city, carried into every tavern and brothel, been taken aboard every ship flying every flag. Mongo had lost his fight! Jaffa had a new champion — Sinbad of Baghdad!

  “Allah above!” cried Milo gleefully, throwing a towel around Sinbad’s shoulders, leading him from the platform. “I’ve never seen anything like that in all my days. How did you beat him? What sort of tricks were those?”

  “Taught to me in Cathay,” replied the exhausted mariner. “An Oriental form of fighting employed by the best warriors of Peking. But best never used except when necessary. This art form is deadly.”

  Milo shook his head in wonder and glanced at the still-prostrate Mongo lying near the far edge of the ring.

  “Go collect our winnings before Feisal reneges,” said Sinbad. “I’ll be all right. I just want to have a look at him,” And he turned toward the moaning Mongo.

  Feisal dispatched his bookmakers to pay off all debts.

  He stepped onto the stage and glared down at his fallen fighter. The Bruiser struggled to his knees and looked pitifully at his patron. “I … I’m sorry, Feisal,” he wheezed. “I’ve never faced anyone … like that … “

  Feisal glowered. “Sorry? Sorry, you say? You fool! You clown! Do you know how much this fight has cost me? Four-to-one odds I have to pay. Four to one! I’m ruined! Do you hear? Ruined/” His lips were quivering and his hands were shaking. There had been hundreds of bets placed, amounting up to a tidy sum indeed. It would take months to recoup from tonight’s disaster.

  “Forgive me, Feisal,” whimpered the Bruiser. “Take my share of the purse, if you like … ”

  “Your share? Why, you crawling flotsam! You sewer rat with a swine for a mother! You have no share! You have nothing. And I’ll see to it that you never fight in Jaffa again! In fact, I’ll see to it that you never fight anywhere again! Go, get out of my sight! And be glad I don’t have you sold back into slavery!” Then, to add insult to injury, Feisal nastily kicked Mongo in his already bruised and sore ribs.

  Sinbad turned green with anger as he observed the scene. “Why, you ungrateful cockroach,” he hissed between clenched teeth. And he grabbed the promoter by the collar of his tunic, lifted him up, and threw him from the platform, heaving him upon the group of bookmakers. Then, while the bettors roared with laughter at the sight of the despised Feisal finally getting his comeuppance, Sinbad gave Mongo a helping hand. Meekly the giant stood to his feet and rubbed at his numbed muscles. “You could have killed me,” he said to Sinbad. “Why didn’t you? Had Feisal had his way, I certainly would have killed you.”

  Sinbad shrugged. “Prizefighting is a sport. I would never enter any contest with the thought of taking a man’s life.” Milo was waving for Sinbad’s attention. Laughingly he held up the bulging purse of gold, more than enough to

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  purchase the ship the mariner had been seeking. More than enough to hire a crew of Jaffa’s best seamen.

  “Have you someplace to go?” Sinbad asked Mongo as the defeated fighter dejectedly walked from the platform.

  Mongo shook his head. “Now that Feisal’s turned against me, I have nothing. They’ll never let me fight again. The best I can hope for is to find some work on the docks. My back is still strong, I can carry crates off the ships … ”

  Sinbad looked at him with a growing sense of pity. Out of the ring, it seemed that Mongo was really a gentle fellow, not at all like the monster Feisal had made him out to be. Powerful as an ox, but meek as a lamb.

  “Hold on,” said Sinbad, jumping off the stage after him. “Perhaps you’d like to come with me instead. I’m looking for a crew of able men. Men with no fear and a thirst for risk and adventure. I can’t make bold promises, but our voyage holds great opportunity … ” He looked up at the giant and grinned. “And I don’t mind saying someone with your strength would be a fine asset on a perilous voyage to the Pillars of Hercules,”

  “Then I’m your man,” laughed Mongo. He clasped Sinbad’s hand so hard that he almost broke it. “Besides, I was getting tired of prizefighting anyway.”

  Don Giovanni hopped onto Sinbad’s shoulder as Milo came over with their win
nings. With a little bit more luck, both ship and crew would be his within a week, and then they would be off, across the Mediterranean in search of the mysterious Red Dahlia.

  Milo, Mongo, and Sinbad, with the frog on his shoulder, walked briskly from the old warehouse and out into the night air. The mariner from Baghdad, hastily dressed in his desert clothes, thought only of donning a captain’s garb again and getting a ship under his feet. Milo began to sing an old sea chantey and Mongo joined in, keeping harmony while Don Giovanni tapped his webbed foot in time. Soon even Sinbad joined in the tune, looking to each of his friends and beaming. It was a small crew who stood beside him now, but as loyal and steadfast as any he had ever had. A good beginning for the adventures ahead. Yes, a very good beginning.

  PART FOUR

  A champion of Araby undertakes his voyage and meets the scourge of the Mediterranean.

  Captain Sinbad stirred from his thoughts at the sound of the harsh voice of his new first mate calling above the wind. He turned from his post at the bridge and gazed forward to the tall masts, the maze of taut shrouds and rigging and the golden-swelled canvas. Cotton clouds rolled slowly by in a perfect blue sky. He filled his lungs with the invigorating salty air, feeling the gentle rocking of the deck, hearing the soft creaking of aged wood as his ship slashed through the swells. A fine ship, stout and sturdy, worthy of any voyage.

  Less than a dozen years old, she’d been built in Acco by the best craftsmen west of Basra. Sleek, double-masted, and constructed with the finest hardwoods imported from the forests of Byzantium, she was as seasoned as she was sturdy. Thirty-one meters long from bowsprit to stern, she carried a crew of twenty-three. Sinbad knew he had been lucky to get her. Her price had been high; the cost of refitting her for long-distance duty had taken every coin left over. Still, Sinbad did not complain. He renamed the ship Scheherazade and eagerly signed on his crew.

  It only took a couple of days until his complement was complete, many of his sailors gladly forgoing better wages on other merchant ships for the opportunity of sailing with Baghdad’s most famed captain. And much to Sinbad’s delight, he was even able to find several available seamen who had sailed with him before, including crusty Abu the Persian whom he immediately made his first mate. Thus, with Mongo as boatswain and Milo his trusty cook and servant, not to mention the constant companionship of Don Giovanni, Sinbad sailed from Jaffa’s harbor in good company.