After he, too, disappeared, the beach was searched as closely as it had been for the Star Princess. The print of his footsteps was seen and they were traced up and down the sand, then to one side toward a high hill. On the path up the hill, little twigs had been broken, and here and there a leaf had been bruised and crushed; and so it was known that he had climbed to the top of the hill. He was traced still farther, to the very edge of a cliff that overhung sharp rocks and a wild commotion of breakers. The people looked upon them sadly and shook their heads. “Poor Prince,” they said, “his love for the Star Princess has made him mad and he has flung himself over the cliff.” But one sage old man, who had seen many strange things in his long life, shook his head and muttered, “Not madness but magic.” If the breakers that beat on the base of the cliff had chosen to speak, they, too, would have said, “Not madness but magic.” The Prince had gone out on the shore, as he so often went, and that night he heard the same sweet voice that had called the Star Princess into the sea. “Come to me, come to me,” it cried, now low and sweet, now loud and strong, but ever so powerful that even the Prince could hardly resist it. Suddenly, in the midst of the strength and the sweetness, there came a wail that tore his very heart. “My Prince, my Prince,” it said, “save me, save me!” And without a glance behind him he sprang straight off the cliff and into the raging sea. “Aha, now I have two of you!” shrieked the mermaid with fiendish delight. Then, when she looked upon him more closely and saw how tall and noble and beautiful he was, she hesitated. “I will not tear you limb from limb,” she said. “I have a daughter who will soon take a husband, and if she chooses you, you may live.” “I will have no false mermaid for a wife,” declared the young Prince, as boldly as if he had still been in the palace of the Island Kingdom. “You will not?” shrieked the mermaid. “How dare you insult my daughter, you earthborn creature!” She waved her hands to and fro before his face. His eyes closed, and for a moment he was in a deep slumber. When he awoke, the mermaid had gone. He was alone, but he was no longer a handsome young prince; she had put upon him the form of a sculpin. Prince or sculpin, he had but one thought, to find the Star Princess; and he swam as rapidly as he could, first in one direction, then in another, until he came in sight of the Waterworld den where the mermaid and her monsters dwelt. It was just at the moment when the mermaid was sending out the Star Princess and the sea-monster to find the ten thousand pearls.