“Ah, well!” he cried to the Prince, “no doubt you think you are very
clever, but remember there is still another night, and next time you
may not prove so lucky in keeping the Princess with you.”
So saying he went away with the Princess, and the Prince saw him no
more until evening. Then for the third time he came, and brought the
Princess with him.
“Watch her well,” said he, “for I promise you will not have so easy a
task this time as you have had before.”
Then he went away, and the four comrades set themselves to watch. But
again all happened as it had before. In spite of themselves they could
not stay awake. First they nodded and then they snored, and then they
fell into such a deep sleep that if the walls had fallen about them
they would not have known it. For this was an enchanted sleep that the
Magician had thrown upon them in order to take away the Princess.
Not until day began to dawn did the four awake, and when they did there
was nothing to be seen of the Princess.
“Well, she is not here in the room,” said Sharpsight, “so methinks I’d
better look outside.”
Then he leaned from the window, and for a long time he looked about
him. At last he spoke. “Master, I see the Princess, but to bring her
back will not be such an easy task as it was before. Three hundred
miles from here is a sea. At the bottom of the sea is a shell. In that
shell is a pearl, and that pearl is the Princess. But to bring that
pearl up from the sea is a task for Broad as well as Long.”
“Very well,” said the Prince, “then Long must take Broad with him on
one shoulder. Only make haste and return again quickly, in heaven’s
name, or the Magician may be here before you are back, and we shall be
turned into stone.”
Well, the three servants were willing enough to be off. Long stretched
himself out until he was three times as tall as he had been the first
time, and that was the most he could stretch. Then he went away, thirty
miles at a step. At that rate it was no time before he came to the sea.
But the sea was fathoms deep, and the shell lay at the very bottom of
it, and try as he might he could not reach it.
“Now it is my turn,” said Broad. Then he lay down and put his mouth to
the sea and began to drink. He drank and drank and swelled and swelled
until it was wonderful to see him, and in the end he swallowed so much
of the water that it was easy enough for Long to reach down and pick
up the shell.
“And now we must make haste,” cried Sharpsight, “for as I look back at
the castle I see that the Magician is already waking.”
At once Long took his companions on his shoulders and started back the
way he had come. But Broad had drunk so much water and was so heavy
that Long could not go as fast as he otherwise would. “Broad, you will
have to wait here, and I will come back for you later,” he cried, and
with that he threw Broad down from his shoulder as though he had been a
sack full of grain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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