Sadko at once commenced to finger his harp, and forgetting all his trading and golden prosperity--perhaps the water washed his memory clean also--he played such music as the sea fairies with the pink conch shells could not surpass. Then he struck up a merry dance-tune, and at once the Tsar rose from his throne and began to jump about, beating time with the skirts of his royal robe and swinging his mantle of white fleece round him like an encircling cloud, while above all gleamed his hair as yellow as a bunch of hay. At the sound a troop of lovely sea fairies, clad in transparent garments of the most beautiful colours, joined in a choral dance, while strange sea creatures squatted and leapt about the oozy floor of the ocean sea. But the merriment at the bottom of the Water Tsar's kingdom made sad havoc at the top. For the upper waters of the sea were churned into yeasty foam, heaving into great billows, breaking ships asunder, drowning many mariners, and swallowing up rich stores of merchandise. For three hours did Sadko play, and then the quiet-eyed Water Tsaritza said to him in a compelling voice: "Break thy harp of maple-wood, Sadko the Rich Guest, for though the Water Tsar makes merry in his palace below, in the upper borders of his realm there is trouble enough and to spare." All at once Sadko stopped playing, broke his harp and snapped its golden strings, and when the Water Tsar commanded him to play for two hours more, he told him boldly that the instrument was broken. "But I have sea-smiths here," said His Watery Majesty, "who can mend a broken pearl, so that it would be an easy thing for them to restore a harp-string." "All the sea-smiths of your ocean realm," said Sadko, "could not revive music that is lost. That can only be done in Holy Russia, when the maker of the music comes once more to his own home." "Talk not of land kingdoms," said the Tsar, whirling round Sadko in the hope of regaining the step which he had lost, but finding it impossible to dance without music. "Stay with me and wed some beautiful sea-maiden. Take your choice from the maids in the train of my queen." Seeing that he was in the power of the Water Tsar, Sadko promised to do so, and asked the advice of the quiet-eyed Water Tsaritza, who gave it in her own compelling voice, so that Sadko felt that it was a command. "Do not choose," she said, "any sea-maid from the first three hundred which the Tsar will marshal before you, but let them pass by in all their beauty. Do not choose from the second three hundred, but let them pass in all their loveliness. But from the third three hundred choose the Princess who shall come last of all, and who is smaller and blacker than all the rest. But when you have chosen her do not kiss her, for if you do, you shall never more dwell in Holy Russia, nor see the fair white world and the round and ruddy sun."